The Demon and the Dead Man
by Lucillia
Summary: When Naruto is three, he gets a brother. A brother that previously belonged to someone else.
1. Izuna's Return

Madara should have known that Orochimaru would have found where the former leaders of the Uchiha Clan were buried. Considering the nature of the Sannin's experiments, it was only a matter of time before he turned his eyes away from the remains of the Senju and towards those of Konoha's other founding clan. Fortunately, he had gotten wind of this experiment before the other man's plans in that regard could go too far. Sarutobi Sasuke's son would eventually get wind of what his former student was doing, but based on the man's past behavior, it probably wouldn't happen until it was far too late for the one individual that concerned him. Sarutobi Hiruzen was far too soft-hearted, and nothing like his father who had been a worthy adversary at all.

As Tobi who would be his representative from this day forth, his living avatar who would be the one to deal with the day to day forwarding of his plans until he was revived at the right moment fought the Yondaime and did his best to raze the village with the Kyuubi which was a task he longed to do but was too old for, he snuck into one of Orochimaru's secret facilities. After ghosting through the empty and mostly silent halls, he came to the room that contained what he searched for this night, that which Orochimaru had regarded as more of an intellectual exercise than anything and hadn't yet found a use for, clones of the heads of the Uchiha clan, clones that at the moment were mere infants.

After double checking that he'd got the right batch of infants, he went down the short row of babies looking for a certain one, one whom he'd been handed and told would be his responsibility to protect and help grow when he was nearly four. Being of the same line, they were all similar, with his father's clone being the most alike, but he knew Izuna's Chakra like he knew his own, and even with the miniscule amount that these little abominations who would grow up never knowing what they were possessed, his brother's copy who had been made from a piece of his brother that had been stolen from his grave shone out to him like a small beacon.

When he'd learned of the experiment, he had contemplated killing the boy, but his brother was one of the few things he cared for, and the thought of having a living piece of his brother in the world that he'd been gone from for so long had been comforting in a way. Right up until he had looked down in the bassinet that had undoubtedly been stolen from the hospital, the decision to let the clone live hadn't been set in stone. But, when he saw those wide dark eyes staring up at him, he had found to his surprise that he was gently lifting the infant from the bassinet and cradling it in his arms as he had done with the first Izuna back when he was a baby rather than lowering a kunai towards it for a fatal strike.

He hadn't known what to expect when he first held his brother's clone in his arms. Considering what he'd read about cloning, he'd known not to expect much, but when the eyes that had belonged to his brother held no recognition, and the infant began to fuss over the fact that it was being held by a stranger rather than calming down and falling asleep like his little brother used to, it had hurt. He didn't like the pain that he felt over the fact that the one person in the universe that should always be able to recognize him didn't, so he decided to do something about it. That something involved theoretical exercises involving improvements and out branches of a certain jutsu of Senju Tobirama's, and the clone of his grandfather. He'd never liked the man all that much the first time around, and his clone would be far more useful in death than the man had ever been in life.

When the deed was done, he departed from the woods where he'd done it after leaving Orochimaru's lab with a pair of pilfered infants and found and hired a wet nurse to deal with the things his brother could not take care of on his own due to the fact that he was inhabiting the body of an infant.

After dealing with a number of important tasks in preperation for his passing, he returned to the home of the wet nurse who had lived in an out of the way village in a remote corner of Fire Country three years later, reasonably confident that his brother would now have control over his biological functions, would be able to feed and dress himself, and would be ready to travel with him. What he found when he arrived at the wet nurse's home however was what seemed to be a normal three year-old child who talked a mile a minute in toddler babble, couldn't tie his own shoes, and who apparently didn't recognize him if the question of "Who are you?" which he didn't answer was anything to judge by. The only reason he could think for why this had happened besides his complete failure to house Izuna's soul in its body where it belonged with the experimental seal and jutsu combination that he'd created was that an infant's mind wasn't equipped to handle the memories of an adult and so had gotten rid of them.

After accepting a piece of macaroni art from the small boy, he slunk away disappointed, but with vague notions of taking the child on as his apprentice when he returned, as the boy was his brother's blood. To that end, he had ordered the wet nurse to send the child to Suna for ninja training when the time came as he departed never to return.

As he left, he never saw the expression on the child's face as the small boy found himself wondering why he was thinking of the older boy who had pushed him over while he was walking, and had picked him up and held him while he cried over his hurt knee, and associating that boy with the man who was walking away. If he had paused in that moment, he would have known that the memories were there, but mostly blocked by the small mind that couldn't yet understand most of them and therefore pushed them away until it could get a grip on them, rather than risk breaking, and that almost every time the small boy experienced something familiar in his life, a similar memory from his old life would return, filling in yet another piece of the puzzle and bringing another small part of his brother back.

As Madara disappeared beyond the Horizon, an inexplicable sadness overcame a small boy named Izuna, and for the first time since he'd gotten past his terrible twos, he didn't smile happily as he was given a new toy or his favorite food at dinner or allowed to play with his toy boats during bathtime.

As things turned out, Izuna was not dragged to Sunagakure to be trained as a ninja when he was six as the wet nurse had been ordered. This had been because less than a week after Madara had visited and left for the last time before his planned resurrection, the woman had died in a household accident while he was out playing on the lawn. The woman's neighbor - believing that the child would have better chances in Konoha - gave Izuna to a border patrol unit as they were passing through on their way back to the hidden village.

While she was bathing him shortly after they arrived back in Konoha, the squad leader who'd been considering keeping him noticed a seal on the boy and brought him to an expert she knew since she couldn't make heads or tails of it. The expert then brought the boy to another expert who brought him to the Hokage. After a thorough examination, the Hokage decided that there was nothing to be done about it at this time.

Since the seal didn't seem to be hurting anybody - as the boy seemed to be an ordinary three year-old albeit with some odd memories - the Hokage deemed it safe enough to leave the boy at the orphanage.

Had the villagers been a bit kinder and a little less distrustful of things that were slightly out of the ordinary, Izuna's arrival at the orphanage probably would have been the end of it. He'd been given a good second chance at life, and by the time he would have had all of his memories back, he would have been happily making his way through a civilian school. Every afternoon after school, he would have been helping out an old man who would have trained him in a job that he loved and hadn't had the opportunity to do the first time around because of the life he'd been born into in return. Had his hypothetical life continued in this somewhat idyllic manner, Tobi wouldn't have bothered him since he hadn't been told about him because he wasn't necessary for the plan, and by the time Madara was resurrected, he wouldn't have had the time to take him as an apprentice as he would be brought back in the midst of battle.

Unfortunately for any plans for just such a civilian life that Izuna may have had in the future, rumors about the purpose of the seal that the ninja who had brought him to Konoha had discovered had spread. By the time Izuna had reached the orphanage, the story of how he'd been used to resurrect the spirit of a dead man and how that man's soul was now trapped in his body replacing the one he'd been born with had gone from one end of the village to the other. Speculation on who this person who had been resurrected through this horrific technique was and how evil he must have been to condone such a thing ran rampant. When the matron of the orphanage had looked at the boy who had been delivered to her and noticed that he had eyes that were "far too old" for a child his age, she had decided to separate him from the other children and put him in with Naruto as there were no other free rooms available, and the blond brat who had tried to set his mattress on fire the week before could look after itself. As far as she had been concerned, she wasn't about to allow a man whose identity was as yet unknown sleep in the same room as and potentially harm the children under her care on her watch.

As Naruto tried to understand why the orphanage staff had put another bed in his room, Izuna stood in the doorway of what was to be his new room and stared at the other boy who was to be his roommate. He'd never seen hair that shade of yellow before.

**Edited 1-20-13**


	2. Adventures and Their Consequences

Naruto smiled as he ran across the field, never having seen so much grass before. The looks the villagers had given him and the boy who had moved into his room and taken the extra bed that the caretakers had put in there when he arrived the week before - which was forever ago to him - faded from his immediate memory. He'd never had much of an attention span, and a great deal rolled off of of him without sticking. Right now, the day was good and there was nothing else. The sun was bright and shiny, the sky was blue with little puffy white clouds in it, and there was grass everywhere he chose to look. Izuna was smiling almost as wide as Naruto as he chased after the other boy.

The two boys had snuck out of the orphanage a couple hours before as small children were wont to do when they weren't adequately supervised and had wandered around the village until they'd reached one of the training grounds which was a great deal larger than the paltry lawn that was attached to the orphanage, and served as the orphanage's playground. Both children were happy with this place, as neither child was aware of the risks of tripping and falling on a weapon that had been left behind by a careless owner or the risks of getting caught between a pair of sparring ninja that came with playing around on the training grounds. All they were concerned with was the bright sun, the tickly green grass, and the game of chase they were playing at the moment.

The few times Naruto and Izuna been let outside to play in the week since the dark haired boy had arrived at the orphanage, they had both been separated from the other children. When Izuna had tried to play with the other children like he did with some of the kids in the town where he used to live back when his wetnurse Sanriku had watched over him, the people who were watching him dragged him away from the other kids and said that "Men aren't supposed to play with little children.". He didn't understand what that was supposed to mean, and why it meant that he couldn't play with the other children, but he had Naruto, so he wasn't completely lonely.

Naruto was nice, but not as nice as Madara-nii. He missed his Madara-nii. His Madara-nii who held him the night the fire and noises came and took their daddy away, Madara-nii who had held him while he cried when...

_"There is nothing to feel guilty for. They turned traitor to our clan and sold secrets about our defenses to the Senju."_

_He still regretted what he and his brother had been forced to do that day though. The new power he had gained from it felt dirty somehow. Hours afterward, his eyes still burned with the guilt of killing a pair of cousins that he'd loved and cared for, a pair of cousins that he and Madara had played with as they grew up. He knew Madara felt guilty too no matter how many times he said otherwise. It was as obvious as those eyes that had just stopped weeping the blood that had left red tear tracks running down his brother's face._

He shook his head trying to rid himself of the memory. The stuff from when he was big hurt when he tried to understand it.

After getting his head back into the game, he eventually caught up to Naruto who was running around in circles, and tackled him like he used to do to Madara-nii. They rolled over a couple of times, and when they came to a stop, Naruto looked shocked for a moment, but then he started laughing. He grinned back at his sunny haired friend and started tickling him. This made his blond companion laugh even harder. As he moved from tickling Naruto's side to tickling his belly, someone abruptly grabbed him.

It was one of the people in the animal masks.

As he squirmed in the man's grip, the man who wore red robes with a white overcoat and a red and white hat that said Fire picked Naruto up and examined him carefully, before tickling his side.

"How did you get out here Naruto?" the man with the fire hat that he remembered seeing before he was left at the orphanage asked the giggling boy.

"Me 'n Zuna 'scaped. Zuna show how. Zuna's lots smart." Naruto replied.

"He did, did he?" the man with the fire hat said, looking at him with narrowed eyes which meant that he was in trouble. His father used to look at him like that before he went away.

"Did Izuna tell you where you were going?" the man with the fire hat asked Naruto, still giving him that look.

"Yep. Outside!" Naruto replied happily.

"Outside where?" the man with the fire hat asked, his expression darkening even further.

"Outside outside." Naruto chirped back.

"I see." the man with the fire hat said before making some sort of hand signal which caused a man in a mask that looked like a rat to appear.

"Well Naruto, you've had quite the adventure, but now it's over. Nezumi here will be taking you back to the orphanage." the man with the fire hat said as he handed Naruto to the guy with the rat mask.

"Wha' 'bout Zuna?" Naruto asked.

"I have to talk to him about something." the man with the fire hat said. "Now be a good boy and go with Nezumi Naruto."

" 'Kay. Bye. Bye Zuna." Naruto said the instant before he and the man with the rat mask disappeared.

As soon as Naruto was gone, the expression on the man with the fire hat's face changed, the fond look he gave Naruto immediately vanished, and his expression became meaner and more serious. He didn't like the way he looked at him when he turned to look at him. It was the way Madara-nii used to look at the Senju after his father left.

"Take him to Inoichi." the man with the fire hat said. "The Yamanaka that we had examine him when he arrived might not have done a thorough enough job of checking him and I don't want to take any chances, especially since he seems to have been an associate of Uchiha Madara if the reports I've received are accurate."

* * *

After returning to his office, the Sandaime sighed as he settled into his chair and began working on the paperwork he'd abandoned earlier. He'd nearly had a heart attack when he'd heard that Naruto had vanished from the orphanage. When reports started coming in that the boy had been seen making his way towards the outskirts of the village in the company of the boy who had been brought to his attention the week before, he had been about ready to go out there and kill the boy. He had almost killed the boy out on the training ground in fact, but that little niggling doubt that things might have been far more innocent than they seemed, and that the boys were having some sort of childish adventure like the ones his own children had gotten up to - driving him and their ANBU guards spare - and that the boy was what he was reported to be had stayed his hand.

His hand would stay stayed until he got a definitive answer on exactly what the boy was. Inoichi's report would decide this Izuna's fate. If Izuna was the innocent child he appeared to be, then he would live. If Izuna was something else, then no matter how cute or innocent looking the package he was contained in, he would die.

He really didn't like killing children, but he would do what it took to secure Naruto's safety, and it wouldn't really be killing a child in Izuna's case if it turned out he wasn't as innocent as he appeared.

When Izuna had arrived in Konoha, the exam that had been done on him had confirmed him to be a Uchiha, and had further shown that he was a healthy three year-old child with the occasional memory of having been older. After the results of the exam had been made known, the Uchiha clan had rejected the child when he'd offered them custody, and had strongly suggested that he get rid of him. Rather than kill the child as he probably should have done since he didn't want the blood of a toddler on his hands, he had sent the boy to the orphanage where he'd met Naruto and the young Jinchurriki had bonded with him, turning him into an even bigger headache, especially if he had to kill him after Inoichi's report arrived.

A couple of the reports he'd received from the people who were monitoring both Izuna and Naruto who were conveniently located in the same room in the last week since he'd sent the boy to the orphanage had been worrisome. The boy had been heard calling out for a Madara-nii at night, and it was to be assumed that he was referring to Uchiha Madara. Whether this was merely the actions of a child who was calling out for an older family member, or something more sinister had yet to be determined.

Knowing that he was probably doing the wrong thing yet again, and that he should be eliminating the risk rather than toying with it to see when it would blow up in his face, the Hokage turned back to his paperwork as he waited for Inoichi's report. If this turned out to be like the Hyuuga snafu, he knew that he would only have himself to blame. If he was lucky, Danzo would poke his nose into the issue and deal with it before he had to. If that were the case, he would make sure that Danzo was the one who was stuck with the task of explaining to a crying Naruto exactly why his only friend in the world had to die.

**Edited 1-20-13**


	3. Deciding Izuna's Fate

Inoichi felt slightly sick as he withdrew from the mind of the boy who lay restrained on the table before him. It had to be done however, as it had been uncertain as to whether or not the boy was actually a boy or a threat to the village. There had been a strong possibility that this had been an infiltration attempt by a particularly unethical enemy ninja who hadn't been afraid to die in order to do so and potentially bring Konoha to its knees. Fortunately, the child didn't seem to be a threat to the village, and he could report this to the Hokage who had been unsettled by the prospect of killing the boy.

Ninja killed when they had to, and a good ninja, or at the very least a sane ninja, thought carefully about killing when it wasn't clearly part of the mission.

He had thoroughly examined the boy over the course of several hours and, aside from determining that the boy had the mind of a child and therefore essentially was a child despite the memories lurking in the background waiting until a time when the boy could actually process them to show themselves, he had definitively determined the identity of the soul that inhabited the boy's body. The boy housed the soul of one Uchiha Izuna, younger brother to Uchiha Madara. How or even why he housed the soul of this man was completely unknown.

The fact that the decaying corpses of several Uchiha infants that the clan hadn't known existed were discovered when Orochimaru's facility had been raided nearly three years before couldn't be a coincidence. Whatever Orochimaru had been trying to do in his search for immortality had obviously not gone the way he had been hoping if the dead Uchiha babies that had never been born to the clan and the boy who was a child with the memories of a dead man locked away where he currently couldn't get at them were anything to judge by.

Sighing, he released the small boy who was about his daughter's age from the table and carried him to the T&I breakroom where he would be more comfortable. The child's life had been ruined pretty much before it even began much like that Mokuton experiment of Orochimaru's that had lived in the Sannin's lab since he was an infant who was about thirteen now. Once he got the boy situated with a young woman who did secretarial work for the department who did her best to calm the child down, he left and headed to the Hokage's office to personally share his findings.

"Well?" the Hokage asked as he tried to collect his thoughts before he gave the man his report.

"Right now, Izuna, aged approximately three years, is just a child." he started.

"What do you mean right now?" the Hokage asked, his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"He possesses most or all of the memories of his former self, but they have mostly been blocked by his mind which isn't ready or able to process them yet. At the rate some of the memories are slipping through, I would estimate that the block on those memories will have mostly dissipated by the time he reaches his teens." he replied.

"And these memories that are slipping through?" the Hokage asked.

"They're mostly stuff from when he was a few years older than he is now, though there are a few memories from after he reached adulthood. Most of those are memories of the field of battle, which isn't all that surprising considering how strong such memories tend to be." he replied.

"Have you made any progress in determining whose spirit resides in the boy's body?" the Hokage asked.

"It is the soul of one Uchiha Izuna, who was the younger brother of Uchiha Madara." he replied.

"I see." the Hokage said, tensing briefly before relaxing slightly.

Considering the fact that the Hokage was born shortly after Konoha's founding, he probably knew more about who this Izuna person had been than anyone from his generation would, as the man hadn't made the Academy history books as far as he could remember, and hadn't featured in any of the material on the founding of Konoha that he could find when he studied it in his youth.

"In your opinion, is Izuna a threat to Naruto?" the Hokage asked after several long moments of thought.

"No. He's rather attached to the other boy and sees him as a friend." he replied.

"Thank you. I would like to see a full report on your findings later. You're dismissed." the Hokage said before lighting his pipe.

* * *

Sarutobi Hiruzen who had been Hokage longer than the Shodai and Nidaime Hokages combined leaned back in his chair contemplating the problem that had been set before him. On the one hand, the child who Naruto had become so fond of and latched onto was a child. On the other, the child wouldn't always remain so and would eventually be getting his memories of the time when he'd been an adult back. On the one hand, Izuna was the only sibling of Uchiha Madara's that had survived to adulthood. On the other hand however, Izuna had also had his eyes stolen from him by said brother, and had died long before Madara had gained control of the Kyuubi and would quite likely not know the secret for doing so because of this.

On the one hand, the boy was a potential danger, and on the other the boy was only potentially a danger and could be the best thing that happened to Naruto. While he was loathe to let a potential danger rest in Konoha, he also didn't like killing innocent children which is what the boy currently was. That, and if the boy remained as fond of Naruto as he was now... It seemed that he would have to call for one other person before he decided the child's fate. With that in mind, he sent one of the secretaries out with a request that Uchiha Fugaku come to his office.

Twenty minutes later, Fugaku showed up looking as unhappy and unpleasant as he always did since the Kyuubi attack. It seemed that in the last three years, the man had forgotten how to smile, and had hardened from the stern but fair and somewhat likable man he used to be into something altogether more unpleasant, and he regretted that change and what had likely led up to it. Back before the attack, he actually used to like spending time with young Fugaku. Not so much anymore however.

"What do you know about Uchiha Izuna?" he asked the man as soon as the formalities were over.

"Uchiha Izuna?" Fugaku asked before pausing to think for a moment and eventually asking "Which one are you asking about?"

"Uchiha Madara's younger brother." he replied, remembering that during his lifetime there had been a female Jounin, two Chunin and an Academy student with that name, none in the same generation, and only the Academy student was currently living.

A frown crossed Fugaku's face as he attempted to recall the information that had been requested.

"My grandfather used to talk about him a lot when I was a kid." Fugaku eventually replied. "Itachi's sort of named after him. He led the clan at Madara's side until he fell in battle. They used to call him the "Heart of the Uchiha Clan". I think that he was more liked than Madara was, and that was one of the reasons that the clan had been almost glad to see the back of Madara when he departed after the founding since his taking of Izuna's eyes had been seen as what had been the cause of his death. Why do you ask?"

The Hokage relaxed even further at the information that Fugaku had given him as it sounded quite promising, quite promising indeed. Especially, if he could create more bonds between the boy and the village before he got all of his memories back, and remembered that his clan had been at war with the Senju for generations. That war which had ended long ago had still left quite the grudge amongst the Uchiha, and it tended to brush off on anyone associated with the Senju, especially now.

"No reason in particular, I just wanted to set my mind at ease about certain things." he eventually replied to Fugaku's question before settling back.

"It's about that boy who turned up, isn't it?" Fugaku asked before taking a sip of the tea that one of the secretaries had brought him.

"In a manner of speaking." he replied before taking a sip of his own tea. He'd tried to make this meeting as one between equals rather than one in which a superior demanded information from an inferior despite the fact that it was such. Considering how the Uchiha had been treated recently, flaunting that fact or at least appearing to would likely irk Fugaku to no end and cause him to withhold information out of spite.

"Is that all you want?" Fugaku asked.

"Yes." he replied.

"Then I shall take my leave of you." Fugaku said as he set his cup down on the low table they were seated at.

As Fugaku departed, he decided that he would allow the child Izuna to live. The boy had bonded with Naruto, and based on the reports he'd received, neither child had any prospects of gaining any other friends at the orphanage. He didn't want his successor's son to be alone throughout his childhood like most other Jinchuriki were - especially considering the mental problems that tended to cause later in life - and if Izuna became close to the boy as he thought he would since they were practically alone together before he fully remembered who he was, it might nip any possible mischief involving a certain Uchiha and the Kyuubi in the bud.

If he played his cards right, this could work to his advantage, or at the very least not turn into a complete disaster.

* * *

As Fugaku made his way back to his office at the station and the massive mound of paperwork that he'd left behind on his desk when he'd answered the Hokage's summons, he found himself grumbling. He'd often found himself grumbling lately, and today's topic was the reason he'd been summoned to the Hokage's office, Izuna.

"Out of all the strong Uchiha they could have picked, they had to bring back Izuna." he muttered "Madara would have been useful. Izuna however...If what I heard about him was true, he would have agreed with all of that Will of Fire crap and - even worse - the brat doesn't even have his memories."

He had half a mind to hit the person who had dragged Uchiha Izuna back from the afterlife with a blunt object. Repeatedly. If they were going to bring someone back from the dead, they should have made sure that they were useful. That, and if they were going to bring back the strongest Uchiha, they should have brought back Madara, not the one who had been calling for peace long enough that the Uchiha took the Senju up on their offer soon after he died despite the fact that it had been the Senju who'd killed him after Madara took his eyes.

As far as he was concerned, Izuna deserved to stay in the orphanage. Aside from the fact that he wasn't useful, he was an abomination, and no member of his clan would be willing to take him in, himself inculuded. The dead should stay dead, or at the very least be of use to the living when they returned. Izuna had died, and wasn't useful for anything when he returned. Therefore, he had no place in his clan.

* * *

Naruto bit his lip in worry. Izuna hadn't come back for a very long time. He'd had dinner, and gone to bed, and Izuna still wasn't back. Now the sun was back up, and he still wasn't here. As he was getting ready for breakfast without Izuna, the door opened and the dark haired boy who had occupied his thoughts for hours - which was far longer than any other thought or person had occupied his attention before - entered the room. Izuna looked like he'd been crying, but he was too happy to have his friend back to even think about that.

"Zuna!" he yelled happily as he raced across the room toward his friend and gave him a hug. Izuna started crying as he did so.

"Wha's wrong Zuna?" he asked, worried for his friend who had been away for so long.

Izuna started crying even more. He hugged his friend some more and hoped that it would make him stop. It was making him feel like crying too.

**Edited 1-21-13**


	4. The New Apartment and the Luddite

Izuna sighed as he tried to decide whether or not using the stove thing in the apartment he and Naruto had moved into the week before after their adventures became too much for the orphanage staff to handle was worth the risk. Apparently, you could teach a five year-old elemental ninjutsu, provided it was one of the lower ranked ones that weren't very Chakra intensive. It shouldn't have been too surprising considering the fact that he'd learned the Great Fireball Technique when he was seven the last time around.

He knew when he'd learned the Grand Fireball Technique because - though his memory was spotty in some areas - he remembered being about ten-years old and following his brother who'd been fourteen out onto the battlefield. He also remembered when he'd first used the three basic jutsu that all Uchiha children were taught so they could run and hide during a surprise attack, Kawarimi, Henge, and Bunshin, and that had been when he'd been a little older than he and Naruto were now. He knew that there were more memories he'd eventually get back and that he'd been a man at one point because people at the orphanage constantly told him so, and because he had a few memories of being much much bigger than he was at ten.

Most of those memories from when he was bigger than ten involved fighting at Madara-nii's side. Madara-nii who was gone and had been gone for almost as long as the Hokage had been alive. Madara-nii who always seemed to be right there as more and more memories returned. Madara-nii who he missed so badly it hurt. Madara-nii who he'd never see again...

His fireball - which he could do now he remembered how - and the small wind technique that he'd taught Naruto who was really five - though the orphanage caretakers seemed to think he was something else entirely - didn't mix. Well actually, they had mixed a bit too well, and that had been the last straw for the orphanage because they had ended up needing a new roof despite the fact that the fireball he'd managed to make was a really small one rather than one of the big ones that he used to be able to make when he was ten. The reason behind the orphanage needing the new roof had been because he'd accidentally crossed the thing with the wind technique that was meant to clear tracks from sand or off grass or other such surfaces which he'd taught Naruto when they'd been hiding on the roof playing ninja.

After the fire had finally been put out, the Hokage had needed to find a new place for him, Naruto, and a large number of other orphans who couldn't live in an orphanage that had charred beams for a roof to live. There had been a rash of adoptions immediately following the fire, but he and Naruto hadn't been amongst those who had been given new families. Who wanted someone who'd been dead before and whatever the hell Naruto was thought to be despite the fact that to all appearances, he was an ordinary boy after all?

In the end, he and Naruto had been given a small apartment in one of the more mediocre parts of town to live in, and it had been implied that he would be the one who would be looking after Naruto from now on when they'd moved in. While he didn't mind looking after the boy he'd sort of adopted as his little brother too much since he liked Naruto, he also sort of dreaded it because looking after Naruto was a full time job for three people. He was glad of the lack of constant "supervision" that had come with being forced to live on his own with Naruto though. The glares from the orphanage staff had gotten nastier and nastier over the years.

When he and Naruto had been at the orphanage, the people there had watched them like a hawk, especially him when he tried to interact with the other children. He had a feeling that this had to do with the fact that he'd been a man before, and they thought he still was one. There were some evil people that did bad things to children and - as they didn't know who he had been before - they apparently thought he was one of those people.

It explained why the Hokage had sent him to that scary blond guy with the strange eyes who had gotten into his head when he had taken Naruto out of the orphanage for a day on the town when they were three. When he'd been tickling Naruto, they'd probably thought that he was trying to do something else, something that involved women - especially redheads - that he didn't quite remember or understand. The Hokage whom he didn't entirely trust seemed to trust him with Naruto now though.

If things went the way they usually did, Naruto would be coming back from the Hokage's office in time for lunch, which meant that he had to get said meal fixed by the time he returned so he could prove to the Hokage that they were responsible enough to keep the apartment they'd been given, rather than be returned to the orphanage when it got a new roof. Today, that was going to be a problem since he and Naruto had just run out of things that could be eaten raw, which meant that he would actually have to cook something.

Cooking something would be a problem. Not because he didn't know how to cook - as his grandma had taught him how when he was nine - but because he didn't trust the stove. He'd been told that the stove ran on electricity, and when he'd tried to find out what electricity was, the person explaining it to him had mentioned lightning and Lightning jutsus. He wasn't about to trust anything that ran on the same thing that powered a Lightning jutsu. Those things hurt, and could kill you very quickly.

After learning exactly what electricity was, he'd forbidden Naruto from getting that television thing he'd wanted or from even turning the lights on for that matter. The fact that the lights at the orphanage had seemed to work just fine didn't sway his decision. If he'd known what powered them back when he and Naruto lived there, he would have done his best to keep them all off. The candles that the Hokage purchased when getting supplies for the apartment were perfectly fine as far as he was concerned, and produced enough light to see by.

Wishing for a nice safe cookfire, and knowing that he couldn't make one since there weren't adequate means for venting the smoke out of the apartment, he approached the stove and turned it on. No fire appeared, and he had no idea as to how food was supposed to cook on it without one. Slowly - though he wasn't quite sure how - heat began radiating off of the top of the of the stove. When he ran his hand above the surface of the stove, he found that the source of the heat was the front flat metal coil on the left. He poked the object and rapidly pulled his burned finger away, nearly falling off of the chair he was standing on as he did so.

So that was how it worked. This stove thing used lightning to heat the metal coils like kunai that had been stuck in a fire. That didn't mean he trusted the stove any more than he did anything else that ran on "electricity" however. He would be using it just this once since he needed to get lunch ready as quickly as possible, and then he was going to find a way to deal with the cookfire problem. Perhaps a metal container of some sort set out on the small balcony...

As he was frying several eggs for lunch, Naruto returned with the Hokage.

"Hey Izuna-nii, guess what -ttebayo!" Naruto yelled as he barreled into the apartment.

"What-ttebane?" he asked. The other boy had somehow picked up the verbal tic that he had spent his entire childhood and probably his entire adulthood as well trying to get rid of. He'd been nominally successful at times, especially after Madara-nii had started smacking him over the head every time he said it. Madara-nii had told him he'd picked the annoying habit up from their mother who he barely remembered.

As he was flipping Naruto's share of the eggs onto a plate, the Hokage yet again gave him a strange look that was a cross between surprised and suspicious, as he did every time he did something the man found odd. He didn't know what it was that had caught the man's attention this time, as the strangest things seemed to arouse the man's suspicions about him.

"The Hokage took me out to eat ramen!" Naruto yelled.

Great. He'd gone through all that hassle, burned his finger, risked breaking his neck, and cooked three extra eggs for nothing.

* * *

As Naruto gobbled down his second lunch, the Hokage looked around the apartment he'd given the boys. It wasn't the best, but it wasn't the worst either, and was affordable on what little income the boys had. One of the better features of the apartment was the rather excellent view of the Hokage Monument which he thought would help motivate Naruto who had expressed a desire to become Hokage earlier that year. The fact that the apartment was closer to the Yondaime's face than any of the others was no coincidence, as seeing the man's face through the window almost made it seem as if the man was watching over his son as he had been unable to do in life. He had planned on waiting until Naruto was seven or so before he gave him the apartment, but certain events that had been caused by Izuna had forced his hand.

A child with the mind and impulse control of a five year-old and the memories of a genius ten year-old who had been taught to be independent practically since day one was bound to cause trouble, especially since the consequences of certain actions had yet to be pounded in. Fortunately, the problems the kid had caused this time were reparable, and the lecture he'd been given seemed to have made enough of an impression that he would think twice before doing something like what he and Naruto had done the week before and hopefully, there wouldn't be anymore disasters on this scale before the boy's impulse control caught up with the boy's mental age.

While the boy's actions had cost Konoha a great deal of money, it was a good thing the orphanage caught fire when it did while almost all of the children were outside and everyone could escape, considering the discovery that the repair crew had made. A check of the building in order to see if it was in desperate need of any other repairs since they were going through the expense of replacing the roof and may as well deal with any other problems the orphanage had had uncovered an electrical problem that could have sparked a potentially tragic fire at any moment, in an area that would have made escaping from the building in time difficult. Dozens of children - including Naruto - could have died if the problem hadn't been spotted and fixed in time.

The apartment the boys were now living in was clean at the moment, and everything seemed to be put away. The heavy blanket that had been thrown across the window that was supposed to let in a great deal of natural light especially in the early morning in lieu of blinds made the place rather dark, especially since none of the lights were on. A single candle that was set on the small kitchen table was the only illumination besides the faint ruddy glow that was coming from the stove burner and the light that was coming in through the open door.

"Why are all of the lights off?" he asked no-one in particular.

"Izuna-nii doesn't like them. I think he's scared of them." Naruto replied from where he was trying to snatch an egg off of Izuna's plate while the boy was distracted with cooking some of the bacon he'd bought when he'd moved the boys into the apartment.

That made sense in a way. Back when Uchiha Izuna was first a child, electricity was rare, and almost unheard of in the more rural regions. The wiring of Konoha for electricity and the building of the generator had been a big deal back when it had happened. When he'd been growing up, there had been stories about the older residents not letting their homes be wired for a variety of reasons, but mainly because they didn't trust electricity or the devices that ran on it. Why the boy had shown no signs of this at the orphanage and waited until he'd gotten an apartment before he'd almost entirely rejected technology though, he had no idea.

When he flipped the switch by the door, turning on the light in the main room of the apartment, he noted Izuna's slight flinch and the wary look that crossed the boy's face which apparently confirmed Naruto's reply. Looking at the switch and the light fixture in the light, he found himself chuckling when he noticed a pair of seals that were virtually identical to the seals that were on the roof of the Hokage Tower and several other tall structures around the village which attracted and absorbed lightning so the rest of the building wouldn't be hit. He would have to have a talk with the boy to get him over his irrational fear of electricity later, since he didn't want this apartment catching fire as well because one of the boys had left a candle unattended.

* * *

As the sun set, Izuna kept himself turned away from the Hokage monument as he dragged Naruto inside in order to set his futon out and go to bed. Every time he looked at the monument with its four slightly weathered stone faces which had been carved to look like the village's leaders, he had been struck with a feeling of loss and something else, especially when he looked at the first two faces. After a great deal of thought on the subject, he figured that it was because the monument drove in the fact that Madara-nii was gone, and wouldn't be coming back, especially since nobody knew how he himself had come back except for the person who had brought him back from the dead.

He wasn't quite sure how long it had been since he had died, but he knew that he'd died before those faces had been carved onto the side of that cliff. He'd gathered as much from the few conversations he'd had with the Hokage. The old man who ran the village had once let it slip that he'd died before he was born, and he'd heard somewhere that the Hokage had been born the year that Konoha had been founded.

While trying not to think about the monument and what it meant to him, he managed to usher Naruto from the balcony which seemed to be his favorite place in the building and into the apartment to get ready for bed. Tomorrow was going to be another busy and frustrating day, as was any day he tried to teach a certain hyperactive child who wasn't particularly studious how to read. If he didn't teach the boy who was more interested in running loose in the village and the surrounding woods now however, he'd probably never learn.

When it came to his own education, he could've been at the Academy by now, but he had decided to wait for Naruto so he could help him through, and Naruto needed to know how to read Hiragana at the level a civilian first grader was expected to be at at the very least before attending the Academy. He was the "Aniki" now, and it was his job to look after Naruto like Madara-nii had looked after him.

**Edited 1-21-13**


	5. Old School Ninjas and Pranks

Naruto grinned as he ducked down so he wouldn't be seen by the guy at the front desk in the KMPF station as he was sneaking in. He was playing a prank on that mean guy who had come by the apartment and asked Izuna-nii about his eyes and almost hit him when he'd accidentally got paint on his pants when it flew off of his brush while he was painting a picture for Izuna-nii. Izuna didn't like the mean man either, and had said that someone called Madara had been a much better leader of the Uchiha Clan, whatever that was. He had offered to pull a prank on the mean guy, and Izuna-nii had laughed and ruffled his hair, said "Okay", and told him what prank he should pull.

Izuna-nii liked his pranks when he didn't try to pull them on him. Back when he'd first started, Izuna-nii had said the time he'd greased the hallway in the orphanage with cooking oil was "Brilliant" before he laughed until he cried when the Matron had gone sliding down the hall. He hadn't originally meant to do that. He'd been carrying the cooking oil out to the trash like he was supposed to when he'd spilled some, and he'd spread it around so it wouldn't be obvious that he did so so he wouldn't have to clean it up. Izuna-nii had caught him, and had thought what he was doing was funny, especially when the Matron who was in charge of the orphanage had slipped.

Eventually, after a great deal of sneaking through the police station so he could pull off today's prank, he reached the small officer's breakroom where his target was located. After peering around to make sure the coast was clear, he entered the room, shoved one of the chairs against the counter, and climbed up onto it. The big round can that was his target was located right next to the coffee maker, the same as it was in the orphanage staff room. After peering inside to check the level of ground coffee in the can, he took the can down and dumped its contents in the trash. He then reached into his bag and pulled out another can that was just as big which Izuna-nii had gotten specially for this prank. He opened the can and started pouring its contents into the other can.

It was at that point that one of the Uchiha who ran the station walked in...

"What the...?" the man said, before finally reacting and grabbing him.

* * *

In the middle of what had previously been a long and boring afternoon, Uchiha Fugaku looked up from his paperwork to see Yashiro walking into his office carrying a certain small boy who - according to popular opinion - was the demon that was sealed within him, and who - according to his opinion - was nothing but a menace like his mother had been. If there had been something of his father in him other than his hair and eye color, he might have actually come to like the child but, there wasn't. While he hadn't personally liked the boy's father, he had respected the man. The boy's mother on the other hand...

"Yashiro, why do you have the Uzumaki child with you?" he asked as he set a file aside.

"The little guy was trying to switch our coffee to Decaf." Yashiro replied with an amused smirk.

"Why would he do that?" he asked, surprised that that was all the kid had tried to do while he'd been running loose in his station considering the brat's infamous destructive tendencies.

"Because you were mean to me an' Izuna-nii!" the boy exclaimed from across the room where he was tucked under Yashiro's arm.

"But, why Decaf?" he asked, confused by the boy's actions. He'd never been able to follow the boy's mother's thought processes either. If the woman hadn't been totally hot, he wouldn't have had any idea as to why Namikaze had married her.

" 'Cause Hokage-jiji said that that was the most evil thing you could do to a person when he'd found out that the secretaries had changed his coffee for "health reasons"." the boy replied.

At that point, Yashiro - who had a small grandchild who was about a year or so younger than the Uzumaki brat - lost it and started quietly snickering before shifting the position he was holding the boy in to one that was probably more comfortable for the man, but too close for his tastes. Rather than being slung under the man's arm, the Uzumaki was now set against the man's side while his arm supported the boy's bottom so he wouldn't fall, the way one would hold a large baby or a toddler who wouldn't be much smaller than the Uzumaki now that he thought about it.

"Yashiro, you will make that," he said, pointing at the Uzumaki who was looking up at the man in confusion "clean up the mess it made and pay for the coffee it wasted, and then you well get it out of our station as quickly as possible, preferably without anyone knowing it was here."

"Yes, sir." Yashiro said before turning and leaving with the Uzumaki who he was still carrying.

He sighed and rubbed his temples as soon as Yashiro and the boy were gone and the door to his office was closed. This was a headache waiting to happen. His wife had been somewhat fond of the Uzumaki boy's mother, and hadn't wanted to leave the boy at the orphanage, but she had understood why she had to do so.

With the accusations that had been leveled against the Uchiha clan, it had become policy to avoid the Uzumaki at all costs and leave him for the ANBU to deal with when he got out of hand. If the Uzumaki child were seen in the presence of a Uchiha other than Izuna - who most of the village didn't realize had been born Uchiha and inhabited a body that was biologically Uchiha - it could cause problems. No, it would cause problems. Problems he would be stuck trying to deal with while Shimura tried to further alienate their clan, and the Hokage turned a blind eye to him while he did so.

Being stuck in that fancy district at the edge of town away from everyone else had been bad enough despite the fact that the Uchiha had tended to cluster together before the Kyuubi attack. Back then, it had been by choice.

* * *

"So, how did it go?" Izuna asked as he tended to the meat on the small grill he'd acquired using some of the more traditional ninja skills that seemed to have fallen by the wayside. If those kids from the Academy hadn't wanted their portable grill taken, they shouldn't have left it outside where anyone could grab it. By taking the grill, he'd taught them a valuable lesson.

"Um, I got caught changing the coffee, and they made me clean it up and emptied Gama-chan, but Uchiha Yashiro-oyaji gave me a cookie and said I was cute." Naruto replied.

Naruto had gone to prank the Uchiha for him after the current Clan Head had come asking whether or not he had activated his Sharingan, and had threatened to rip out his eyes if he did anything against the clan despite the fact that the clan had apparently decided not to acknowledge him since they hadn't tried to get him from the orphanage or have him move into their district. He'd suggested that the boy do something small because he didn't want his little brother to become an enemy of his former clan. Clan policy when dealing with enemies was harsh to say the least. The boy had been caught as he expected he would be, and apparently things had gone better than expected.

He would keep an eye on this Yashiro character to make sure he wasn't at threat to Naruto's health and wellbeing since Naruto seemed to admire him though. He could count the number of people who showed Naruto kindness on one hand, and one of those people had turned around and tried to poison him a week later after he'd gotten the boy to trust him enough to take food from him.

"Naruto, I thought you'd like to know that I'll be teaching you how to pitch a tent tomorrow." he said to the boy who was watching him cook the rabbit he'd acquired in the woods.

"Yay!" Naruto said excitedly. "You're the best big brother ever!"

* * *

Uchiha Yashiro smiled proudly at his youngest child who would be graduating the Academy this year as they ate their first meal together since the boy had returned from his survival exercise. The boy was wolfing down his food as if he hadn't eaten in a week, despite the fact that it couldn't have been more than two days at the most.

"So, how did the survival exercise go?" he asked.

"Someone stole our grill." his son said scowling.

"Really?" he asked. He had noticed that it hadn't been in the pile of supplies that his son had dumped in the hallway, but he'd thought that that had been because it had been put away.

"Yeah. The Hyuuga had his tent stolen while he was asleep, and someone emptied out the Inuzuka's snare as well. She insists that it caught something, but there was nothing there when we came to check it." his son said between bites of rice.

"I trust that this has taught you to better secure your personal belongings." he told his son sternly, no longer smiling. If he ever found whoever stole the grill, he would give them a piece of his mind. That thing had been rather expensive since it was top of the line, and had been had been specially made to be light-weight, portable, be able to withstand extremely high temperatures, not rust, and fiendishly difficult to dent.

"Yes father." his son said sullenly, apparently thinking along the same lines he was.

* * *

"...And you set traps around your campsite?" Hyuuga Hiashi asked the boy who had lost one of the clan's exceedingly expensive self-folding tents.

"No sir." the boy replied, his shoulders slumping even further than they had been when he'd been called into his presence.

"Why not?" he asked.

"I didn't feel it necessary since we were within the boundaries of the village." the boy replied.

"And yet, the tent was stolen." he said.

After lecturing him, Hiashi assigned a number of demeaning chores to the boy, since he didn't want to activate the child's seal over a lost tent, but also didn't want him to get away without punishment for his carelessness. The boy wasn't all that deserving of his anger, someone else was. Very few people dared to steal from the Hyuuga, and if he ever found the person who had dared to do so, he would make sure that that person wouldn't do so for a second time.

* * *

Across town from the Hyuuga, the Academy Instructor who'd been in charge of the survival exercise during which a number of items had been pilfered rewound the tape that he'd copied from the tape that had held video from the cameras that had been set up in a certain section of the forest surrounding Konoha knowing that he shouldn't find it funny, especially since it had happened to his students. He had found it to be absolutely hilarious though, and had brought a recording of the highlights home with him.

Calling the friends he'd invited over to the couch, he hit play when the tape reached his favorite part.

"No traps? No traps at all? Madara-nii would have killed me himself if I did something that stupid." the small boy who didn't look older than four or so who was on the television said as he finished circling a certain tent.

The boy then pulled up the back stakes of the tent and carefully pushed it upward and over the small Hyuuga who peacefully slumbered in his sleeping bag completely unaware of what was happening to his tent. Once the tent was clear of the Hyuuga, the boy pulled up the rest of the stakes, dismantled the tent, and dragged it off. The Hyuuga whined at the drop in temperature, curled himself into a ball, and continued to sleep, unaware of the fact that his tent was now missing.

The entire group laughed at this.

"Definitely an old school Uchiha." Uchiha Tekka who had been a snot nosed brat who had been put on his Genin team back during the war and who'd also had several drinks earlier choked out through his laughter. "Our clan wrote the book on what to do with things that aren't nailed down."

After watching the results of that little display of skill as well as several others, the Instructor was tempted to invite the boy with the sticky fingers who was now emptying Inuzuka Hana's snare to the Academy for a lecture on securing one's belongings, even knowing what he was.

**Edited 1-21-13**


	6. Mizuki

Mizuki sighed as he sat on the bench he'd plopped down on after desultorily wandering through the village for a while after he'd reported to the Hokage, officially ending what was unequivocally the mission from Hell. The ninja he and his team had been supposed to guard the person they had been escorting from had a member in their group that had been stronger than anticipated which had bumped the mission up from a mid B to an A rank. During the battle he and his team had found themselves in, he ended up losing a teammate before the rest of the team could back the pair of them up when the team had split up to deal with the threats that had ambushed them and he and said teammate had gotten stuck with an enemy Chunin who should have been a Jounin already.

If that hadn't been bad enough, his teammate had been killed by his kunai which the enemy had caught when he'd thrown it at the man and used to stab his teammate who had been a close-range fighter. To make matters worse, when his other teammates finally arrived to provide assistance they found him practically cowering in the bushes and his teammate dead by a Konoha kunai. The looks in his other teammates' eyes at that moment had hurt more than anything.

While he was considered to be a relatively nice person and rather pleasant to be around most of the time, he had a jealous streak a mile wide, and people - other than his best friend Umino Iruka who was oblivious to his faults - knew it. One of his favorite pastimes when he was feeling bad which had developed into a habit was to make his friend Iruka - and anyone else he was jealous of for that matter - feel even worse. As well as being jealous of Iruka for all the attention he was getting from everyone including the Hokage who all wanted to give the poor orphan a hug and help him out, he had been rather jealous of the teammate of his who'd died, and his other teammates knew it.

He had limited himself to snide comments towards the man though, comments that had merely been meant to sting, comments that his other teammates had heard and had taken as something else after they had found the man dead, killed by his weapon. The entire way back to Konoha, he had heard his teammates who had suddenly become cold to him whispering behind his back, and he had a good idea as to what they were saying. After the Hokage had dismissed the team following thier report, the two of them had stayed behind, and he knew exactly what they were going to tell the old man without him around. The teammate he'd been jealous of had died by his kunai after all. The fact that it hadn't been his hand that had wielded it was immaterial at this point in the face of his teammates' suspicions.

When the Demon and his servant who had been brought back from the grave walked by carrying a folded tent on which a portable grill that ninjas used for cooking when out in the field had been set, he found that he didn't even have the energy to glare at them like he had done the few times he'd encountered them before. This apparently caused them to pause. A wary look crossed both of their faces as they tried to sort out what was wrong with their environment, and they turned to look at him upon realizing that he was the source of their unease. The Demon then dropped his end of the tent and ran up to him, stopping about two feet in front of him. It then started studying him intently as if it had never seen something like him before. The Demon's servant hung back watching him guardedly, as if trying to determine whether or not he was a threat.

"Wha's wrong?" the Demon asked, coming closer, to the point that it was almost touching him. If he didn't know any better, he would be willing to swear that the concern in its eyes was genuine.

"My teammate died!" he snapped at the creature.

An instant later, the creature launched itself at him, and before he could react, he found himself...enveloped in a hug?

* * *

Naruto hugged the gray haired man like he did Izuna-nii when he was sad. He knew that when things died, it made people sad. He'd been sad when his ninja rat had died. He and Izuna-nii had taught it to do tricks after they got it. It could roll over and beg, but it couldn't avoid traps. He hadn't got to bury it like Hiro had his rabbit. The Matron had called it a dirty creature and thrown it in the trash before he could do so.

While he hugged him, the man looked down at him and frowned. It wasn't a mean frown. It was a confused frown, like he didn't quite know what was going on, and he wasn't sure whether or not he liked it. A couple seconds later, the man pushed him off of his lap and onto the ground.

Izuna-nii never did that when he hugged him.

Oh, yeah, he wasn't supposed to hug strangers. It was one of the rules.

* * *

Mizuki wasn't sure what to think when the Demon apologized after he'd shoved it to the ground. After he'd answered its question and told it that his teammate whom he'd hated had died, the creature had hugged him, patted his head, and said "It's Okay". The look of concern on its face when it did so didn't waver for an instant. Trying to find something other than the Demon's strange behavior for his reeling mind to latch onto, he once more spotted the tent with the portable camping grill stacked on it.

"What are you two up to?" he asked, wondering what sort of nefarious plot involved a tent and a camping grill.

The Demon looked confused for a moment before looking back at his servant and brightening.

"Izuna-nii's gonna show me how to pitch a tent! Dattebayo!" the Demon yelled happily, stunning him with his abrupt mood change which proved that the earlier concern was nothing more than an act, and causing several people to look in their direction. For some strange reason, all of the shinobi who turned to look at them started snickering.

"Not if you don't hurry up -ttebane!" the Demon's servant yelled back before smacking himself on the back of the head and muttering "I have got to stop saying that."

It was at that point that one of the Uchiha walked up.

"Hey, is that my grill?" the man with the greying brown hair asked.

"Uchiha Yashiro-oyaji!" the Demon called out happily upon seeing the man.

"Hello Naruto-chan." the Uchiha said with a small smile before turning back to the Demon's servant.

"That is my grill!" the Uchiha exclaimed. "Why do you have my grill?"

"Unwritten Shinobi rule number one." the Demon's servant replied.

"Always maintain your equipment?" the Uchiha and several other shinobi asked in confusion.

"That's rule number two. What's rule number one?" the Demon's servant asked in a lecturing tone.

" 'If you can carry it off without getting caught it's yours' hasn't been rule number one for decades." the Uchiha replied as he removed the grill from where it was resting atop the folded tent. "And besides, I just caught you. You should get out of here before the Hyuuga decide to take their tent back."

"How do you know...?" the Demon's servant asked, giving the tent a significant look.

"The section of the woods that the Academy students use for survival training has cameras so the Instructors can make sure the students aren't killing each-other, and grade their progress. The video of you swiping the Hyuuga's tent became a hit overnight." the Uchiha replied.

"Come Naruto, we're leaving." the Demon's servant said before picking up his side of the tent. The Demon scrambled to obey, and the two children were off.

"Cute kids." the Uchiha said as he sat down next to him on the bench. "Troublesome, but cute. If Izuna's capable of this at this age, it almost makes me believe the family legend about the time that he and Madara had walked off with a couple of the Senju houses."

"How could you find the Demon cute?" he found himself asking.

"Because yesterday, I realized that Naruto was just a child. Had he been a demon, he would have killed all of us when he snuck into the station unnoticed, or poisoned our coffee, not tried to switch it to Decaf because it was quote The most evil thing a person could do to someone unquote." the Uchiha replied.

Despite himself, and the situation he was in, Mizuki found himself laughing. The mental image of the Kyuubi going around switching unsuspecting people's coffee to Decaf when they weren't looking was too absurd for anything else.

* * *

**Omake:**

A teenage Uchiha Fugaku snuck out into the woods with the old and rather dusty scroll he'd liberated from the family archives, wondering what sort of treasure or wisdom Madara had left behind for his descendants to discover. Once he reached an isolated clearing a good distance away from the village, he found that he could not contain his curiosity any longer.

When he opened the scroll, he found it to be a storage scroll whose seal was in handwriting that wasn't Uchiha Madara's. In the center of the storage seal was the character for "house". Wondering why someone would put a house in a scroll and try to pass it off as one of Madara's belongings, or if they even really had, he cut his thumb and slid it across the seal.

There was a massive puff of smoke which he'd rapidly leapt away from, and just in time too, as when the smoke cleared, the small clearing was filled with the house that had been stored in the scroll that was somewhere underneath it. Had he still been standing there like an idiot, he too would have been crushed by the domicile.

Eventually, his curiosity got the better of him, and he began exploring the exterior of the house. Besides being somewhat old-fashioned, it looked to be a rather ordinary house besides the fact that the symbol of the Senju Clan had been carved above the door. Upon entering the house, he noticed that the interior too was rather ordinary except for the subjects of the photographs that ran down the hallway that many of the rooms branched off of.

In one photograph a pair of children who would later become the Shodai and Nidaime Hokages stared solemnly out at anyone who cared to look at it. In fact, almost all of the people in the pictures that looked down at him looked rather unhappy. This probably had to do with the fact that back when the first two Hokages were children, picture taking took an exceedingly long time, and the subjects of said photographs often had to sit still for hours. By the time that that generation reached adulthood, the process had become much quicker, and smiles started appearing in photographs for pretty much the first time.

This of course begged the question of why the hell his clan had the first two Hokages' family home...

_Two rather inebriated figures silently slunk through the stillness of the night avoiding the patrols in the surrounding area with ease despite their condition and the smell of alcohol that clung to them._

_"This is the best idea you've ever come up with aniki." one of the figures whispered to the other before giggling._

_"Do you have the scroll ready?" another the other whispered back._

_"Yep -ttebane!" the first person said quietly._

_The second person smacked the first person on the head._

_Two minutes later, the few Senju who were still in the area while the main part of the clan was out on a difficult mission and were awake at the time stared in shock as the Clan Head's house abruptly vanished. Five seconds after that, the chase was on._

* * *

**Author's Note:** According to the Narutopedia article on Mizuki, when he'd initially applied to teach at the Academy, he had been denied due to suspicions about his role in the death of one of his teammates, and an investigation which presumably found him innocent was launched. It makes you wonder what something like that could do to a man, especially if the suspicions about the teammate had lingered about for years, blocking his advancement prospects and whatnot, especially if Mizuki had decided to teach at the Academy in order to gain experience for training a team when he became a Jounin, and got stuck there. I thought it would be interesting to see a reasonably nice Mizuki whose main fault was a jealous streak a mile wide who had a growing chip on his shoulder meet Naruto early.

**Edited 1-21-13**


	7. The Hyuuga's Tent

Nauto smiled as he and Izuna-nii reached the woods. Their grill was gone, but that was okay because Izuna-nii had told him that he would teach him how to make a campfire to cook things over and warm the camp. There was less of a chance of anyone stealing that, though Izuna-nii told him a story he'd heard from an older clan member about how an Uzumaki kid had once snuck into the Uchiha camp and walked off with the campfire for no apparent reason, as the kid could have very easily made his own either with or without seals.

Naruto liked the woods and always loved it when he and Izuna-nii got a chance to visit them. In the woods, there were no people glaring at him and Izuna-nii wherever they went or whispering about them behind their backs as they passed. Being alone in the woods didn't hurt so much because, there were a lot of interesting things to look at, and a lot of new things to learn from Izuna-nii who had taught him what plants you couldn't eat. When it came to things you couldn't eat because they'd make you sick, there were a lot of those. Fortunately, there were just as many things you could eat as well.

"This looks like a good spot. We seem to be far enough away from the training grounds that we won't be hit by stray weapons, and close enough to the village that people won't panic over the fact that we're gone." Izuna-nii said as they stopped in a small clearing near one of the streams which supplied water to Konoha. After it was processed, filtered, checked for poisons and contamination, and fluoridated of course.

Setting up the tent had been fun. He hadn't really had any idea of what he was doing, and he got hit by one of the tent poles, and it had hurt, but the pain eventually went away, and the tent was standing and looked like a tent by the time they were done with it, which was good. After they had set up the tent to his and Izuna-nii's satisfaction, he crawled inside to set up his and Izuna-nii's bedrolls while Izuna-nii went to collect rocks from the stream for their campfire. When he came out of the tent, there was a big scary man with strange eyes standing outside.

He looked angry.

The man with the long dark hair, the weird eyes with no black bits in them who was wearing fancy old-fashioned clothes had his arms crossed over his chest as he scowled down at him. The man's scowl wasn't the usual scowl he saw around the village, it was angrier, much angrier. The scowl seemed to bring with it a promise of pain. He never wanted to see a scowl like that again.

Izuna-nii who had been carrying a pile of rocks for the campfire, dropped all of his rocks upon spotting the man. After dropping all of the rocks on the ground, he picked one up and moved into a defensive position, holding it like a weapon.

"What do you have to say for yourselves?" the scary man asked sternly, seemingly ignoring Izuna-nii's actions.

"Unwritten Shinobi Rule Number One." Izuna-nii said. That was the same thing that he had told Uchiha Yashiro-oyaji when he asked about his grill. Instead of getting angrier like the scary man was doing, Yashiro-oyaji had thought it was funny.

"You were caught. And, that is my tent." the scary man said coldly as he walked over to said tent and touched the pretty drawing that had been on the flap at the front of the tent.

The drawing glowed, and suddenly, the tent started folding itself up until it was as small as Gama-chan. When the tent stopped folding, the scary man picked it up and put it in a hidden pocket and turned to face them.

"I have most definitely gotta get my hands on another one of those." Izuna-nii said, looking at the spot on the scary man's clothes where the tent had been hidden.

"The Hyuuga do not abide thieves." the scary man said as he grabbed Izuna-nii's arm."Seeing as there is no-one to care for you and set you straight when you go astray, I will personally see to your punishment."

"If you can't abide thieves, then what the heck are you guys ninja for? !" Izuna-nii said as he bashed the man's wrist with a rock in order to make him let go.

"If you try to run, I'll just catch you again. I served as a Jounin of the Leaf before I took my place as head of the Hyuuga clan." the scary man said, as Izuna-nii ran over to him, grabbed his hand, and started dragging him away.

Izuna-nii dropped his hand, pushed him behind him, and then settled into a really cool looking Taijutsu stance.

"Bring it you inbred mutant!" Izuna-nii said before his eyes turned red and got black swirly bits in them.

The scary man brought it, and Izuna-nii hit the ground. He looked like he was dead, but he was breathing. Breathing people weren't dead, so that was good. Probably. Well, not so good now that he thought about it. He was alone in the woods with the angry scary guy who was mad at them for stealing his tent, and probably madder at them for trying to hurt them.

Before he could run for help, the big scary man lunged forward and grabbed him by his shirt. He wriggled out of his shirt and ran towards the pile of rocks that Izuna-nii had dropped. He picked up a rock and was about to throw it when the big scary man grabbed his arm and did something funny to it that made it go numb. The big scary man tried to grab him again. He did his best to fight back, but the big scary man did something to his other arm and his legs, and he couldn't move anymore.

While he tried to bite his ankles, the big scary man picked him and Izuna-nii up, and carried them back to Konoha under each arm.

* * *

Hyuuga Hiashi headed towards his clan compound with an unconscious boy under his right arm, and a paralyzed boy under his left. His retrieval of his clan's tent, and dishing out of well deserved punishment to the little brats who were in possession of said tent had not gone according to plan, as he had not intended to use the Juken - even the less damaging version used in training spars - on a pair of small children. After a certain child had insulted both him and his family though, he had only barely held back from making the strikes lethal, and had dealt more damage than he had intended.

During the altercation in the woods, he had rendered the Uchiha boy unconscious rather quickly, rather surprised at the child's lack of skill considering who he had been reputed to have been in his former life. After rendering the Uchiha unconscious, he'd then been forced to paralyze the Uzumaki boy in order to be able to carry him back to the village. The kid's nails had been like a set of talons, and the child had managed to draw blood before he'd been brought down.

The two boys he had captured could consider this part of their lesson on why you don't steal from a Hyuuga.

Just about all of Konoha's residents stopped to stare at him and his cargo when he reached Konoha proper on his way to his family compound. By the time he reached the market district, the whispers had started. Most of the whispers were about the boys and what mischief they must have gotten into this time considering the manner in which they were being carried through the village, but he'd heard his name mentioned in a negative manner a few times as well.

When he thought of the rumors that would undoubtedly start up about him over this - especially since he'd forgotten to retrieve the Uzumaki boy's shirt and put it back on him before carrying him back to town - he winced. Seven years on, and Uchiha Fugaku was still dealing with the rumors that had been started after he'd chased his young clansman Obito half way across Konoha, yanked his pants down, bent him over his knee, and spanked him after a prank.

When he reached the gate of the Hyuuga clan compound, he found the Hokage standing there waiting there for him. Based on the scowl that appeared on the man's face when he spotted the Uzumaki child who was still trying to bite his side with those sharp little baby teeth of his, this meeting would not be going well. Not well at all.

On giving it further thought, he could categorically state that his reaction to the theft of one of his clan's tents had not been all that well thought out...

**Edited 1-21-13**


	8. At the Hospital

Izuna sighed as he woke up in what he very swiftly realized was a hospital. The place he was in had that same medicinal and industrial grade cleanser smell as the medical tent in the Uchiha encampment and the infirmary back at the compound the Uchiha had owned before the founding of Konoha that he'd encountered any number of times before, especially after he'd started his active duty as a shinobi. He'd never cared for either place, and tried to avoid them whenever possible. Sometimes, he'd rather unwisely attempted to do so, until Madara lost his patience and forcibly dragged him in with an injury that had either gotten infected or was bleeding a bit too much.

Whether or not the people here would be like the grim and exceedingly stern man with little patience for "malingerers" who had run the medical tent with an iron fist and a barking voice that often cut through his patients' fitful and much needed slumber, or the nice old lady who had run the infirmary when he was little, he did not know. He was leaning towards nice old lady to every child who came through here, except him and Naruto. Almost nobody treated him or Naruto fairly or kindly, and most of the people who treated Naruto with such regard didn't hold the same for him.

He could never catch a break in this town. If it wasn't the people who all thought he was evil for coming back from the dead - no matter how unwilling that may have been - it was the people who thought he was an adult and should act like one, and not try to hang around small children, even if they were closer to his mental age than the adults in Konoha were. According to the rumors that had been flying around the village practically since the day he'd arrived in the arms of a team of ninja, he was some evil old pervert who was shackled in servitude to Naruto. Thanks to those wonderful rumors, he was as universally disliked as the small cheerful, eager, and perpetually eager to please blond-haired, blue-eyed, exceedingly lovable - despite the fact that he couldn't sit still and pay attention for more than two minutes and had a penchant for pranks - brat he'd adopted as his little brother.

While it was true that he did most of the work around the apartment, he was far from being Naruto's servant. Naruto had several chores of his own to tend to, and as he learned how to do more household tasks properly, his responsibilities increased. Right now, about the best he could hope for when it came to the boy was for the kid to clean up after himself when he made a mess and properly set out and put away his futon. The kid was hopeless at cooking and sucked at cleaning and was absolute pants at general household maintenance.

As his eyes were raking in his surroundings which were rather spartan as he fully came awake thanks to his rising irritation at the situation he was in, a nurse entered the room.

"Awake are you?" the nurse asked coldly as she glared down at him. "It's just as well, since you have a visitor. He's an important man, and I don't want you wasting too much more of his time. You've wasted enough of it while you were asleep."

A minute after the nurse left the room to inform his visitor that he was awake, the Hyuuga who had taken his tent back entered. With his two black eyes, the man looked a bit like an ill-tempered panda. He refrained from commenting though. The Hyuuga had nearly as much pride as their Uchiha kin, and could hold a grudge for just as long. The last thing he needed was for the entire Hyuuga clan to be further set against him than they already were.

Contrary to popular belief, the Uchiha weren't descended from the Hyuuga. A few generations after the split between the sons of the Sage of the Six Paths, there had been another, lesser known sundering of brothers amongst the descendants of the Elder Son. According to the story he'd heard around the campfire after one of his cousins had a bit too much to drink after having gotten into a fight with a team of Hyuuga, the brothers had split when one of the men had married his niece. The descendants of the brother who had taken his niece as a bride were the Hyuuga.

While both the Hyuuga and the Uchiha were a bit inbred in order to preserve their Kekkei Genkai, the Uchiha drew the line at first cousins, and even then, such couplings were rare and not viewed with favor. He'd heard that the Hyuuga however had had a few brother/sister marriages, and he wouldn't have been surprised if that had been the case when it came to the current Hyuuga Clan Head's parents.

"The Hokage ordered me to apologize for my actions." the man said stiffly after he had fully entered the room and closed the door behind him.

"And?" he said, after nearly a minute of silence.

"I apologize for my actions yesterday. Such unforgivable behavior won't happen again." The Hyuuga said before he turned to leave.

That had to have been the most insincere apology he'd ever received, and that included the one from after the time Madara had dragged his bedroll out onto the snow because he'd gotten tired of his snoring, and he'd nearly died of hypothermia in his sleep.

"Say hello to Aunt Ma and Uncle Pa for me!" he called out to the departing figure who was shutting the door to his room.

From the way the man tensed at his comment, he had apparently hit a sore spot.

Excellent.

Now if he could find something else to occupy himself with until he got out of this hell hole. There was no way he was going near the television, or the remote, which was just as well, since it seemed that the nurse had unplugged the television when she was last here, and not out of consideration of his distrust of electricity either.

* * *

After making his apology to the Uzumaki child, Hyuuga Hiashi had found himself staying in the second hospital room he'd visited that day for much longer than he had the first after discovering that the differences between the Uzumaki child and the Uchiha boy whose clan refused to claim him to be like night and day. Where the Uchiha who had been responsible for the theft of his clan's property had looked at him with amused disdain, the Uzumaki child had looked at him in terror. Where the Uchiha child had spurned his apology and threw ancient clan history that had best been forgotten in his face, the Uzumaki child had accepted his apology at face value and said nothing in regards to his lineage.

It had been at the point that he'd been preparing to leave following the apology that he'd realized that the Uzumaki child's bedside water pitcher was completely empty. Upon closer inspection, it had proven to be bone dry as well. He'd automatically grabbed it, filled it, and handed a glass of water to the child who had obviously been thirsty. The look of immense gratitude he'd received for such a small favor had startled him, as what he'd heard about the Uzumaki had led him to believe that he was an ill-mannered, uncouth, ungrateful little brat upon whom any favor would be wasted.

A bit of questioning about when the water pitcher had last been filled had led to the revelation that the last time the boy who was only a couple months older than Hinata had been fed had been when the Uchiha child had given him lunch the day before. Apparently, the boy had arrived at the hospital where he'd been kept overnight for observation while his "brother" recovered in the next room too late for dinner, and someone had "forgotten" to bring him his breakfast.

That had led to him ordering food for the child, and staying to make sure it arrived. While the Uchiha could clearly take care of himself, the Uzumaki could not.

* * *

Just the week before, if someone had told Mizuki that he'd be going to the hospital to visit the Demon, he would have punched their lights out before having them committed. The Uchiha had told him that the Demon was just a child, and the fact that the Demon had tried to comfort him in a most childish manner the day before, and the fact that it had been brought down by a Hyuuga who couldn't come close to comparing to the Yondaime and dragged to the hospital pointed towards this being the truth.

Since he'd had nothing else to do that day, and nobody wanted to run missions with him thanks to the rumors that were spreading through the Shinobi ranks, he'd had plenty of free time to drop by the hospital and make sure that the Demon wasn't there just to torment dying patients. When he reached the Demon's room, it had been to find the Demon jumping on the bed like any other bored child who had been left completely unsupervised during naptime. After getting the demon to stop jumping in case it either broke the bed or itself, he ended up staying with the Demon for a half hour, and listening as the Demon yakked his ear off about Hyuuga-sama who had given him a pitcher of water and a plate of food, and how he wasn't all that scary, and how he was happy to have another visitor.

The Uchiha had been right. Through some sort of miracle, the Yondaime had transformed a massive rampaging demon that had done its level best to destroy Konoha into an ordinary child.

**Edited 1-21-13**


	9. At the Academy

Izuna did his best to smile and look happy for Naruto's sake despite the fact that he was bored nearly to tears. Today was the annual ceremony to welcome new students to the Academy, and he and Naruto numbered amongst those new students this year, as did a number of children who were born to the heads of several of Kohoha's important clans, including Uchiha Fugaku's second son Sasuke. A disproportionate number of the children starting this year were Clan Heirs, which wasn't all that odd when one thought about it, since there had been a massive baby boom in the years immediately following the Third Shinobi World War, as often happened after just about every war. Fortunately, he and Naruto would be in a different class from the Uchiha Head's brat, and wouldn't have to deal with him. He'd never met the child himself, but based on what he'd heard, the boy had been spoiled rotten by the entire clan.

Standing amongst the friends and family who had turned up were Uchiha Yashiro and Mizuki who had shown up to wish Naruto luck. The two men who weren't all that popular in the village for various reasons had grown somewhat fond of Naruto in the nearly two years since they had met him. Yashiro had taken on the role of a surrogate uncle to the both him and Naruto, and Mizuki that of a much older brother to Naruto. This had caused a bit of friction between him and Mizuki who wasn't quite as accepting of him, as the man had constantly undermined him in failed attempts to become Naruto's "favorite" brother. He didn't care all that much for Mizuki himself, so the other man's rejection of him didn't sting as much as it could have. The rejection from his former clan hurt much worse, but he didn't let it get to him though. He'd known none of them when he'd been alive the last time around, so it wasn't as if they were the same clan that he had died for.

In a way all four of them were outcasts. Yashiro because he belonged to the Uchiha who had fallen out of he favor with the village because the villagers thought that they had been behind the Kyuubi attack, Mizuki because it was widely believed that he had deliberately killed a teammate during a mission, himself because he'd been dead for several decades at one point before being brought back to life through unknown and possibly rather heinous means, and Naruto because, well, he wasn't entirely sure why Naruto was considered an outcast, but the word "Demon" had something to do with it. Despite the fact that Yashiro and Mizuki had hung around a bit and turned up that day, it wasn't like they'd banded together to become one happy family like such a group would in some of the sappier children's stories he'd come across in recent years though. Yashiro may have taken on the role of "Uncle", but he didn't drop by all that often, and it was clear that the man had no intentions of adopting either him or Naruto for his own. Mizuki may have taken on the role of "Older brother" but that was only for Naruto, and the man was often way too busy to spend too much time with the boy. The scarred man who was rapidly becoming Mizuki's only friend seemed to be rather uncertain about Naruto like most of the village shinobi were, and had often tried to distract Mizuki's attention from him as well.

Pretty much the only ones in the group who actually were "as close as brothers" were him and Naruto and, as memories of his past life returned widening the gap in their mental ages as he moved closer to becoming the adult he had been, he'd shifted increasingly towards a role that was more analogous to "parent". Still though, Yashiro and Mizuki had both made an effort to show up for the important stuff, which was more than what just about everyone else in the village did. If the three of them hadn't been around, it was quite possible that Naruto would have gone mad from the near total isolation. He was starved enough for attention as it was.

Eventually, after what had seemed like an eternity in which a number of self-important blowhards had spoken, the year's opening ceremony was over, and they were instructed to turn up the next day for their first day of classes. Based on the expressions on his and Naruto's new Instructors' faces, it was clear that they were rather hoping that the two of them wouldn't show up with the rest of the students the following morning.

They showed up however, much to their new Instructor's disappointment.

Based on what he experienced on the first day, he was certain that the opening ceremony had only been a teaser for the amount of boredom and discomfort he would be suffering for the next however many years. The lecture on what it was to be an ninja in service to Konoha that the Instructor gave as soon as roll was called was boring as hell, and full of the sort of propaganda that groups put out in order to help insure the loyalty of its members. After the opening speech which had been dumbed down for the little six and seven year-olds who were unaware of the fact that they'd been recruited into an army was over, the Instructor asked the children if they had any experience with the Ninja arts. Predictably, most of the class raised their hands. The teacher then started asking each member of the class what experience they had, starting with the children from the most important clans that the mediocre ninja had been entrusted with - which weren't all that important at all as the kids from the prestigious clans had been put into a different homeroom class - completely ignoring him and Naruto, which was pretty much par for the course in Konoha. He himself was physically seven like most of the class, but closer to fifteen or so mentally, which made the whole experience mind-numbingly boring and almost painful.

"Every last one of those brats forgot to mention the physical training they've been undergoing practically since the day they started walking, the civilian born included." he muttered when the other kids in the class aside from him, Naruto, and the civilian born brats had finished showing off. He'd done more and gone through much worse than those brats had by the time he'd been their age the last time around. All of the Uchiha children of his generation had.

"Physical training?" the Instructor asked.

"The games most of the kids play around here, hide-and-seek, top-of-the-hill, tree-flag, don't touch the sand, "Ninja", Sparrow counting. I can't believe the kids play that game." he replied.

"Can't believe they play what game?" the Instructor asked.

"Sparrow counting." he replied. "The point scale is identical to the one they used to use for "Keeping Count", they just re-purposed the points values and scores."

The Instructor looked surprised to learn this. He knew why. "Keeping Count" was something some ninja did over their careers to keep track of their kills amongst other things, such as particularly difficult missions, and extreme property destruction. A certain point value was assigned depending on the skill ranking of the kill or the amount of property destroyed, or the difficulty one would have destroying it. Though some treated it as such, it wasn't exactly a game.

"Back before you-know-what happened, me and my brother were forced to re-scale the points value when our scores started getting ridiculously high." he said. Back then, Madara-nii had treated it more like a game than he did, but even he had balked at the scores they were getting when they started tabulating them.

"What scale did you use?" the Instructor asked, looking interested. Apparently, there were still some ninja who kept count, and the Instructor was one of the ones who did.

"Half point for animals that don't go in the dinner pot, one for civs, two for what you now call Genin, five for those who were at about Chunin level, ten for those at Jounin level, twenty-five for those who were at the level you'd refer to as Kage. The property destruction scale didn't start until at least an acre was burned unless there were occupied houses on it." he replied.

"What was your score?" the Instructor asked, apparently wanting to compare whatever paltry score he had hit before he left active field assignments to the one he'd attained in his previous life. A score he wished he hadn't remembered calculating in the days before he'd died when he'd brought up that stupid game.

"Dunno, I quit keeping track after it hit five digits." he replied. It was true. It was too depressing when the score got that high, especially since he hadn't even been twenty-five when it did. He remembered wondering if that was all that his life had been about when he tabulated his lifetime score using his and Madara-nii's scale and hit one that was five digits long. A disturbingly high percentage of that score had been civilians who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, as well as their homes, belongings, and pets. He'd been raised in a time of near perpetual war, but that wasn't really much of an excuse.

After hearing his reply, the Instructor rapidly paled.

"What are you doing here?" the Instructor asked after a minute of silence.

"Aside from the fact that I'm expected to join Konoha's ninja forces in repayment for all of the "nice things" Konoha has given me, and it's easier to join Konoha's forces when one's been through the Academy?" he replied. "I'm here because I'm sure that some things have changed, and a number of advancements have been made in the Ninja arts since the last time around. I'm also here for Naruto."

A look that was a cross between apprehension and revulsion crossed the Instructor's face. The man proceeded to ignore him and Naruto for the rest of the class despite the fact that Naruto knew the answers to all of the academic questions he asked, and raised his hand every time he asked one. It didn't take the entire day for it to become apparent to him that the Instructor didn't want him and Naruto in his class and was willing to do what it took to get rid of them short of attempted murder.

The next day, when they turned up back at the Academy in the morning it was to discover that they'd been transferred to a different class, a class for second year students. Most people would have been honored to be advanced so quickly. He wasn't though, since he knew that it wasn't meant as an honor. He and Naruto had been advanced a grade because the Instructors were trying to get rid of them in the only way they could shy of expulsion, which was to graduate them early.

As he blew through the work that was set before him, he decided that he would have to review the first year curriculum to make sure that there wasn't anything he and Naruto would be missing by being advanced too quickly. Naruto was capable of doing the second year curriculum, or at least the stuff that the Instructors had introduced that day, so he wasn't too worried about him being left behind despite his little attention span problem.

**Edited 1-21-13**


	10. Naruto's Test

Though he was exceedingly nervous and many of the questions were hard and he wasn't sure whether or not he knew the answers to them, Naruto did his best on the test the Instructor had given him at the end of his first week of classes at the Academy. He didn't want to fail and be dropped into a lower class away from Izuna-nii who couldn't come to school today because he was sick and had to be taken to the hospital to get his appendix taken out. He was a bit iffy on the Kanji that were in the questions on the test, since he hadn't been inclined to sit still during the reading lessons Izuna-nii had given him over the years, and Izuna-nii had declared himself satisfied when he'd shown he could read Hiragana at a level that was acceptable for admission to the Academy, but he thought could get the gist of what the questions were, and attempted to answer them accordingly despite the fact that they were hard.

After he'd finished the last question, he nervously watched the expression on the Instructor's face shift after the woman had taken his written test and started marking it. When she handed it back, it was obvious that he'd passed.

Barely.

Following the written test, the instructors led him out to the training field where the class with the Important first year kids were having a lesson on throwing kunai. Izuna-nii had started teaching him how to do that shortly after he'd gotten out of the hospital after the tent incident when he was five, and he was pretty good. But, he was nowhere near as good as Izuna-nii who was constantly talking about how he needed to get back in shape though. As soon as he was situated in front of the targets, the Instructor gave him several kunai and ordered him to throw them at the targets that had been set out for the students. He got three bulls-eyes, another four of them ended up near the center of their targets, and the last three hit the targets but not near center, which was good for him.

This had obviously been either another test or another part of the test the Instructor was giving him, and he had passed this part as well, if only just.

After throwing kunai, the Instructor took him for a private Taijutsu lesson. The other kids who were out there near the sparring ring had tried to watch, but their instructor had herded them inside. He knew how to fight because Izuna-nii had taught him some of the basics when they played together at the orphanage, and taught him a few tricks to use against the Hyuuga so they wouldn't put him in the hospital again like they did after the tent incident a long time ago where he met Hyuuga-sama who had been rather nice despite the fact that he had looked and acted very scary at first. Yashiro-oyaji had taught him a few moves as well, and so had Mizuki-nii who wanted to become a Jounin Instructor one day.

After their training spar was over, the Instructor started scribbling something on a clipboard. From the look on her face during the spar, he'd not only met, but had exceeded her expectations. She had mentioned someone named Itachi as she wrote, and from the way she mentioned him in comparison, he could tell that it meant something good. After she was finished writing, she showed him his score. It was a good one.

After she had finished showing him his score, she took him back inside where another Instructor told him to demonstrate the three basic Academy Ninjutsu. Izuna-nii had laughed about those ninjutsu when their Instructor had introduced them on their second day here, and told him why later after classes got out. Back when Izuna-nii was a kid the first time, the basic three were taught to the children of the Uchiha clan in order to make it easier for the kids to escape if a fight broke out when they were in the area.

He sucked at the basic three though. Izuna-nii said it was because he had too much Chakra and no control. Izuna-nii didn't show him how to correct this problem though, because the Old Man had forbidden him from teaching him Ninjutsu after he and Izuna-nii had set the roof of the orphanage on fire during a game of Ninja. He failed at this attempt at doing the basic three just like he had on the day they had been introduced. That was to be expected though.

The Instructor groaned something that sounded like "So close" as he slammed his head against the table in front of him. As the man was in the middle of telling him to get the hell out of there and go back to the class he and Izuna-nii had with the big kids, the first Instructor who had been rapidly flipping through a book poked him and pointed at something which was printed on one of the pages.

"Stay for a second." the man said. "Is there any Jutsu you can do?"

"I can do one." he said, before showing the man the wind jutsu Izuna-nii had shown him, and the Old Man had told him to never use anywhere near a fire.

Both of the Instructors looked both slightly shocked and windblown when the Jutsu was finished.

"Congratulations Uzumaki Naruto." the female Instructor said as she picked up an object off of the table in front of her. "You have qualified for an early graduation from the Academy. Of all of the Academy students, you are amongst a rare few to have done so."

The woman handed him a Hitai-ate and then told him to go to the Hokage's office to officially register as a Genin.

After receiving the hitai-ate, he cheered loudly before running outside and through a group of students who were eating their lunch as he made his way towards the administrative complex. As he continued on his way at an exceedingly high rate of speed and not paying particular attention to his surroundings, he ran into one of the Uchiha who were in his class.

"Sorry!" he yelled as he kept on going.

"Where the hell do you think you're going pipsqueak?" the older boy asked as he caught up to him and stood directly in his path catching the attention of everyone nearby.

"I just graduated, and I'm on my way to register as a Genin." he replied excitedly.

"You, a Genin?" the Uchiha boy asked in a disbelieving tone.

"Yep!" he replied cheerfully as he went around the boy who was rather rudely blocking his path, and got back on his way to the office where he was supposed to register.

"Yeah right." the boy said before grabbing him by the collar of his jacket.

"Lemme go!" he said as he tried to pull away from the Uchiha.

"Make me." the Uchiha said.

Naruto made him.

Back at the Academy, in the teacher's breakroom, a group of instructors were quietly talking while they grabbed their own lunches which they would be attempting to eat while simultaneously gossiping, and marking their students' work in the limited time allotted to them for their midday meal.

"Well, I'm glad to see the back of him." one of the Instructors said when the two Instructors who had who had given Naruto his early graduation exam had entered the room and indicated that the boy had passed. "I can't wait to get rid of the other one as soon as he gets out of the hospital."

"So, how much did you have to pad his score?" one of the Assistant Instructors asked.

"Had to pad the hell out of the written score, and had to use an obscure loophole to get him through the Jutsu portion of the exam." the Instructor who had tested Naruto replied as she opened her bento. "Didn't have to so much on the physical stuff though. The kid doesn't know jack about the standard Academy Taijutsu form, but he's going to surprise the hell out of anyone who tries to pick on him. He fights like a drunken Uchiha who's been taught just about every dirty trick in the book."

One of the Instructors winced at the woman's last statement.

"Something wrong Matsuda?" one of the instructors asked.

"Let's just say that I know from personal experience that a drunken Uchiha is one of the last things you'll ever want to run into, and can quite easily become the last thing you'll ever run into." Matsuda replied.

The conversation was broken up at that point by a cheerful and helpful little boy who wasn't feeling all that cheerful at the moment who had decided that the best way to help rescue his kinsman from the situation he'd gotten himself into would be to fetch reinforcements.

"Help!" the small child yelled as soon as the door finished slamming open, catching the attention of everyone in the room.

"What is it Sasuke-kun?" the Instructor who had been put in charge of the more important first years because she had a way with children asked.

"Hideki picked a fight with the Uzumaki, and he's beating the crap out of him!" Sasuke replied.

"Well, there went that plan." one of the Instructors muttered before they shuffled out of the room in order to be seen doing something, since they'd get reprimanded by the Hokage who had lectured them about how the Uzumaki was to be treated before the school year started if they let the massive twelve year old beat the shit out of the six year-old boy.

When they got out to where the students had been eating their lunch though, it was to find Uchiha Hideki curled up on the ground torn between clutching his privates and attempting to nurse a bloody nose, and Uzumaki nowhere in sight.

"Where's Uzumaki?" one of the Instructors asked.

As one, all of the children who had watched the fight pointed towards the Administration complex.

"Like I said earlier, I'm glad to see the back of him." one of the Instructors said as they watched a small patch of yellow disappear through a doorway.

**Edited 1-21-13**


	11. The Rest of the Day

The Sandaime Hokage sighed as he looked down at the paperwork his successor/predecessor's son had just given him. This wasn't the first time something like this had happened. Most definitely one of, and quite possibly all three of his own students had been amongst the number of early graduates who had been given the Academy graduation exam in order to get rid of them. It never turned out well for the student in the long run when it came to their personal lives but, he couldn't just return the student to the Academy and tell them to wait a few years.

If he did that, not only would the child become a troublemaker as he or she tried to prove that they had earned the graduation they had been given, but it would seriously damage the child's career over the long run. Students that were returned to the Academy after graduating almost never made it past Chunin, since their superiors were far less likely to put them in for promotion, believing that there had to be something wrong with them if they were returned to the Academy after graduation.

He wanted to see Minato and Kushina's son wear his hat someday, and that would never happen if he returned the child to the Academy now.

He had never been so glad that Genin were given chores that were more suited to Academy students as missions until now. Apparently, his sensei had known what he was doing when he'd created that little safety net back when he and his brother were arranging the ninja forces. Such missions were perfect for young ninja who weren't quite ready for the ninja life, but would be able to hack it in the near future. He couldn't take Naruto's headband away without ruining the boy's career, but he could very well keep the boy training and on D ranks until he was ready for the Chunin Exams in about three to five years or so.

He had the perfect sensei in mind for Naruto. The young man had failed the Genin team he'd been offered this year, and had rather respectfully declined the one that had been offered six months ago, when their sensei had died in a freak training accident, but he was reasonably certain that he wouldn't turn Naruto down, and Danzo couldn't accuse him of giving the Uzumaki the short end of the stick since the young man - aside from being one of the top ninja in the village - had been an exceedingly early graduate himself and had experience in that area. There would be some questioning as to why he would be entrusting Naruto to him, but he could deal with that when the time came.

The sensei he had in mind would be good for Izuna as well, as he had no doubt that Izuna would be graduating as soon as he got out of the hospital. He had less concern for Izuna's welfare in this case, as the boy who had the memories of a fifteen year-old warrior who had already been through a hundred battles and the impulse control of a small child had not been suited for the Academy, and the Academy had not been suited for him. Graduating early would be best in his case, and the sensei he had picked would be able to better keep an eye on him than the Academy Instructors could as he too had the Sharingan.

All that was left would be to find a third member for the team. That would be tricky, as there were no spare Genin to go around at the moment, but it was possible that the Academy Instructors would spot this and graduate a throwaway student who was almost ready to graduate a little early, making that particular task a little easier.

Despite the number of issues he knew the boy would have, he was reasonably certain that things would eventually turn out as well as possible in this situation for Naruto, as they had for his godfather. He'd long suspected that Jiraiya had been a throwaway, but he'd never told the boy, and look how he turned out. Not only was he a living legend, but he was a famous author to boot.

* * *

"How was your day at school dear?" Uchiha Mikoto asked her younger son as he came through the door.

"It was awful." her son said as he put his bag away. "A six year-old from Class 2 graduated, and Hideki decided to try picking on him. Then, Hideki yelled at me after I went and got the Instructors to break up the fight, and called me a tattle-tale."

Mikoto paused as she tried to process this. In almost every case of early graduation, it was a student from Class 1 who graduated. Class 2 was supposed to be for the students who hadn't scored all that high on the entrance examination and were more likely to wash out before graduation. It would appear that someone had been bumped to Class 2 for political reasons in order to make room for a less qualified member of a more prominent clan, and she had a sneaking suspicion that that child had been Sasuke. Either him, or the Hyuuga heiress who was said to be scared of her own shadow. Unfortunately, clan politics had made their way into the very halls of the Academy long ago, and talented children from unimportant families, or those who had no family, or those with foreign parents, tended to get the short end of the stick.

"It was nice of you to try to rescue a younger child from your cousin." Mikoto finally said as she resolved to inquire as to exactly who had graduated today considering the fact that graduations at this point in the year were almost unheard of, especially when new students were involved. Hatake Kakashi who was famous for setting a record by graduating at the age of 5 had been attending the Academy since he was the age at which a civilian child would have entered pre-school. Some people had thought that Hatake Sakumo had thought the Academy was a pre-school.

"I wasn't rescuing him from my cousin, I was rescuing my cousin from him!" Sasuke exclaimed as he entered the kitchen.

"Oh dear." Mikoto said. This was not good. Hideki had been having problems at the Academy and at home since he wasn't the sharpest kunai in the holster, and had not yet activated his Sharingan. Something like this, even if the kid who beat him up had been a prodigy, could completely destroy his future.

Hours later, when Fugaku got home in time for dinner, he was scowling, which meant that he'd had a bad day at work. It looked like one of those days where someone had gotten away with murder on his watch, which was something he'd always took personally.

"How was your day dear?" Mikoto asked when the family minus Itachi who was out on a mission were finally seated.

Fugaku made a face that was nearly a snarl, and based on the way he was holding his chopsticks, he dearly wished that they were a bladed weapon, and that the person responsible for his mood were in striking range. The amount of killing intent he was giving off could easily fell a Chunin. He quickly checked himself though when he caught Sasuke's frightened expression, and the fact that the poor child was on the verge of passing out, having never experienced KI at this level before.

"What's wrong dear?" Mikoto asked, slightly startled by her husband's reaction to her question. She hadn't seen him this pissed since after the clan had been informed that they were going to be moved to a district on the outskirts of town during the rebuilding of Konoha after the Kyuubi attack.

"That Uzumaki!" Fugaku growled when he finally got himself back under control. "He wouldn't have graduated today if that abomination hadn't fed him all of the answers beforehand. That, and I couldn't charge him with attacking Hideki because he'd been in a legal gray area when he did so, as he wasn't registered as a Genin yet, he couldn't be charged as a ninja, and since he had graduated the Academy, he couldn't be charged as a civilian. The Hokage made me let the brat go, and I had Hideki's mother yelling at me the entire afternoon while the work kept piling up. This isn't the first time someone's gotten away with attacking a member of my clan, and if I have anything to say about it, it'll be the last."

"Hideki started that fight." Sasuke who was beginning to recover from his father's little loss of control piped up.

"What did you say?" Fugaku asked, turning on his son who was looking startled over the fact that he'd spoken up, especially when his father was in such a mood.

"Everyone saw the whole thing. The blond kid was headed to the Administration building when Hideki got in his way." Sasuke said, looking down at his rice nervously, afraid to give his father more bad news. "He tried to go around, but Hideki blocked his path again and grabbed him by his collar. The blond kid asked him to let him go, and Hideki told him to make him. The blond kid head butted him in the nose, and kicked him in the balls before I went and got the Instructors."

_That sounds like Kushina alright_. Mikoto thought to herself.

She had avoided the Uzumaki as much as possible like the rest of the clan did in order to stave off accusations of them trying to either influence the boy to their supposed cause, or them trying to keep him on hand in order to unleash the Kyuubi once more, but she had run into the child a couple of times and found that he more closely resembled his mother than he did his father despite his coloring. She'd run into the "abomination" who lived with and took care of the Uzumaki child once as well. The boy who had been a part of their clan in a previous lifetime reminded her of her late grandfather. She wasn't alone in this, as Izuna had reminded a number of other Uchiha who had run into him of family members who had been born prior to the founding of Konoha. She, like the rest of the clan, had little doubt that the person who had been behind the Kyuubi attack had been behind his resurrection as well, making all of them rather wary of the boy who was far too old for his years. But, it was he not she who was allowed near Naruto and allowed to care for Naruto as she could not.

"I will be having words with Hideki later." Fugaku finally sighed after a minute of dark silence following his son's little revelation. "I had been led to believe that the attack had been unprovoked."

* * *

While the family of the Head of the Uchiha Clan and most of the rest of the village for that matter were eating their evening meal, a small group was furtively meeting in a shadowy corner of an isolated section of Konoha...

"We have rid ourselves of the Uzumaki, and shall soon rid ourselves of his companion. But, there is a small problem with our plan. All of the slots on the current Genin teams are occupied, necessitating the passing of another to form a complete team in order prevent their return." the leader of the group said. "Who shall be the third to round out the team?"

"How about that Hyuuga kid?" one of the members of the group who hadn't been too fond of his brilliant but ill-tempered and arrogant student asked.

"Remember what team they will be on." the first person said. "It will not be an honor, and anyone who sees the team will notice this. It would be best to not anger one of the more powerful clans with the "misplacement" of one of their students."

The group started discussing amongst themselves as they considered the merits or lack thereof of their students and put forth suggestions, and a young orphan would never know how close he had come to avoiding a life in Root that day. Eventually, a decision that the entire group found to be acceptable was reached. The kid was from a powerful clan, but the Uchiha had fallen out of favor with the village, and as far as they were concerned, they could suck it. The only reason their brats were still in Class 1 was because they had been given years of training prior to starting at the Academy, placing them ahead of all of the civilian born students and even some of the students from ninja families.

* * *

While most of the villagers were enjoying their dinner, and the Konoha Ninja Academy Instructors were holding their secret conclave, the Hokage sat in his office waiting for someone.

"I'm sorry I'm late Hokage-sama." the person the Hokage was waiting for said as he finally came through the door.

The Hokage made a sharp gesture that caused the excuse the young man was formulating to die in his throat unspoken.

"I'm glad you could finally make it." the Hokage said. "There is a matter of importance that I wish to discuss with you."

The young man stood before him at attention without so much as a nervous tic giving away the unease that radiated from him.

"As you may or may not be aware, young Naruto has been graduated from the academy, and Izuna, and possibly a throw-away student will soon follow." the Hokage continued, watching the young man stiffen slightly. "It is the matter of their future training that I wish to discuss with you.

**Edited 1-21-13**


	12. The Team Comes Together

Shortly before the dinner during which another Academy student's fate was decided, Naruto made his way down to the hospital almost immediately after Yashiro-oyaji had freed him from lock-up. The reason he'd been in lockup was because one of the Uchiha had arrested him for attacking that Hideki kid the instant he'd stepped out of the administration building with a bunch of paperwork he needed Izuna-nii's help to fill out and an order to return to the Mission Assignment desk in a week to get his new sensei. He could have protested how unfair that was until the cows came home, but nobody but Izuna-nii and maybe Mizuki-nii and perhaps Yashiro-oyaji who couldn't really do all that much about it for various reasons would have cared, so he didn't bother. It was pretty much the same way with crying. He only ever really did that around Izuna-nii, and only when things were really bad.

He'd spent a couple hours in a cell at the Police headquarters before Yashiro-oyaji had released him and told him not to get into any more fights with civilians now that he was a ninja because he could get sent to jail for doing that if he hurt them bad enough. Apparently, Academy students counted as civilians since they were not yet part of the ninja force, and he'd gotten lucky this time because he'd only almost been a Genin at the time the fight that wasn't all that much of a fight broke out, and the Old Man had intervened. The Police Chief who was the man he'd met when he'd tried switching out the station coffee shortly after he'd turned five hadn't been too happy about being ordered to release him, and gave him a very nasty look as he was on his way out the door.

As soon as he was gone from the station, slightly surprised that there were so many Uchiha since he'd never seen more than a few of them in one place before as the station had been virtually empty when he'd tried pulling the coffee prank, he headed straight for the hospital, despite the fact that he was very hungry because he'd missed lunch. Izuna-nii would be getting out soon, but that didn't mean that he wouldn't visit him while he was there. Izuna-nii had told him that there must have been some major advancements made in shinobi medicine since the last time he was around, because the last time he'd had his appendix burst on him, he'd nearly died, and been laid up for over a month. This time around, things weren't nearly as bad, and he would be up and able to join him at the Academy on Monday as long as he didn't push himself too much.

The thing was, there would be no joining him at the Academy on Monday since he'd already graduated the Academy. He was sure that Izuna-nii would be very happy to learn that he'd graduated already after only a week, and that he was just that awesome.

After reaching the hospital, he raced straight up to the room that Izuna-nii was staying in.

"Hi Naruto." Izuna-nii said from where he was propped up against a pillow, reading a book. "Did you steal Yashiro-san's hitai-ate again?"

He blushed slightly as he shook his head. He'd stolen Yashiro-oyaji's hitai-ate while he was asleep several months ago, and Yashiro-oyaji had gotten upset and told him that he couldn't wear a hitai-ate until he graduated the Academy and made him promise not to steal anyone else's.

"Nope!" he said happily. "I got my own!"

"...You what?" Izuna-nii asked.

"I graduated today!" he cheerfully exclaimed as he jumped up on the end of Izuna-nii's bed.

**"YOU WHAT?!"** Izuna-nii yelled while releasing alot of that Killing Intent stuff, causing several nurses to race into the room.

* * *

Uchiha Hideki swallowed nervously when his Instructor singled him out first thing on Monday morning before roll was even called. The entire weekend had been hell for him. He'd gotten away with picking on little clanless brats any number of times before, but this time his bad Karma had finally turned around and bitten him in the butt. He had apparently picked on the wrong kid this time, and had been forced to pay for it even after the beating was over.

After the brat had handed him his ass and he was sent home before lunch was even finished, he had gone to his mother who was sure to get the ball rolling in order to get the kid into the trouble he'd deserved. Instead of crushing the kid under the might of the Uchiha Clan, the kid had gotten off scot free, and the might of the Uchiha Clan had been turned back around on him. After personally spanking him, the Head of the Clan had made him sit through a long lecture on how a Uchiha was supposed to behave. He'd then spent the rest of the weekend being punished by his mother who had grounded him for a month after he'd let slip that the Genin who had used a bunch of dirty tricks in their fight in order to beat him hadn't been the only little kid he'd picked on.

Now, it looked like he was getting his punishment from the Academy, because the fight had taken place on school grounds making it a disciplinary problem that they had to deal with. It was even possible that they would expel him which would completely derail any chance he had of becoming a ninja.

Dreading what was to come, he went to the room he'd been instructed to report to, and nervously entered. The room was small, and two desks had been crammed into it in front of a table at which another Academy Instructor was seated. One of the desks was occupied by a dark haired boy who looked like a Uchiha, but wasn't actually a member of his clan, since he hadn't seen the boy before he'd turned up in his class the middle of last week before he got sick. After entering the room, he was told to sit at the unoccupied desk upon which a piece of paper and a pencil had been set.

As soon as he was seated, both he and the boy who wasn't a Uchiha were ordered to turn the papers over and given an hour to complete the test that was on them. The test paper had questions on it ranging from Konoha's history to basic battle strategy, and almost everything in-between. The test was harder than the pop quiz his teacher had given the class at the end of last week to see how much they'd retained, but he was able to answer most of the questions.

After turning in the tests which were promptly marked and returned, his with a passing grade on it, he and the stranger who couldn't have been older than six or seven were led out to the targets by the instructor who had handed them ten kunai and ten shuriken each. He did reasonably well on his tosses, but they weren't his best throws, as he was too worried about, and too busy trying to figure out what was going on to focus properly. All of the weapons hit the targets, which was good. Only five of each bull's-eyed, which wasn't so good. The kid bull's-eyed all of his targets with both shuriken and kunai, looking somewhat upset as he did so.

After they were done throwing weapons, the Instructor led him to a training area for a spar. He tried his best but, because was still distracted with wondering and worrying what was going on, he ended up on his ass in under two minutes. It was the other boy's turn next. He didn't know exactly what the kid did, but in a lightning quick move, the Instructor was down, and had a kunai pressed against his throat. After pinning the Instructor in this position, the boy hissed "You're lucky I don't want to bother with the hassle that will inevitably arise with your demise." in the ear of the man who rapidly paled before letting him up.

He was slightly shaky himself when the shaken instructor led the two of them into a room where they were tested on the basic three Academy jutsu in front of the rather pale looking instructor and another who was apparently there as a witness or something. Both of them easily passed this test. Him because he'd practiced them over and over again for years until his mother was satisfied, and the kid because he was apparently a natural like the blond kid he'd made the mistake of pissing off about two minutes after he'd graduated.

"Congratulations to the both of you." one of the Instructors at the table said as he presented the two of them with hitai-ate "You are amongst a select few to have earned an early graduation from the Academy."

He stared down at the headband he'd been presented with, then looked up at the man who had given it to him. The expression on the man's face wasn't very congratulating. That, and there was something off about his being given the graduation exam several months early when they could have just waited until the end of the year and graduated him with the rest of his class. If they were going to graduate him early, why hadn't they done it last year, or the year before?

Then, it suddenly hit him. They had wanted to get rid of him without upsetting his clan, so they had promoted him early instead of expelling him. This had not been an honor, it had been more punishment for his actions at the end of last week, and if he could see it, then other people would also.

"Gee, thanks, nice to know I'm so welcome here." the little kid he'd been tested with said as he accepted his hitai-ate and stuffed it into his pocket before walking out the door. "By the way, the both of you have something in common with the Shodai and Nidaime Hokages. Hashirama was a prat, and Tobirama was a total fucking jerk. Have a nice life."

Apparently, he wasn't the only one being punished. The creepy little kid who had threatened their Instructor during the Taijutsu portion of the exam was as well.

* * *

After exiting the Hokage's office, the young man stared down at the bells that the Hokage had handed to him to use tomorrow. Bells that had been in the hands of the Nidaime before being passed down to the Sandaime, and then to his students, and the Yondaime after them, and now been given to him to use, even if it was for just this once. He wasn't sure he was ready for this. He didn't know the first thing about teaching, and didn't think he'd make all that good of an instructor. He was just so inexperienced, and had only been promoted eight months ago.

Drawing a deep breath, he entered the Mission Assignment room where his new students were waiting, since the classrooms at the Academy were still in use. The three children, one of whom - a second cousin of his - towered over the other two, one of whom who was nearly seven, and another who was both seven and twenty-eight, and pushing a century, stood waiting for him with expressions that betrayed varying degrees of impatience.

"Good morning." he said, catching the children's attention. "I am Uchiha Shisui, and I'll be your Instructor. If you pass my test that is..."

**Edited 1-21-13**


	13. Shisui's Moments of Doubt

Uchiha Shisui's hands shook slightly as he held the bells which had once belonged to the Nidaime, and were possibly even older, since the teamwork test which determined passing teams for the Nidaime's teaching line had been derived from an old Senju tradition. He'd come to one of his favorite places in an attempt to center himself, and so far it wasn't working. The reason he was so nervous was because he would learn whether or not he would be responsible for teaching, guiding and caring for a team of Genin in the morning.

This was something he wasn't a hundred percent certain he was ready for. Most other Jounin sensei had been Jounin for years and well out of their teens when they took on a team for the first time rather than acted as baby sitters for a day. Despite the fact that he hadn't felt he was ready, he'd had some small hopes of being a teacher as most Jounin did when they were handed a team to evaluate a couple months earlier, but they had fallen through when the team of Academy graduates that the Hokage had assigned him to - most likely with the belief that they would fail - had completely failed to get the purpose of the assignment as expected and couldn't be passed. Though those small hopes had been dashed, what he'd mostly felt when he'd dismissed the trio of failed graduates that day had been relief.

This time however...This time, he had two thirds of a team that could be spectacular, and possibly an entire team if Hideki wasn't completely hopeless. Two of his potential students had lived together ever since they were three, and should by all means work as a unit considering the fact that one of them had been raising and training the other as if he were family. Hideki however...Hideki was a possible wrench in his plans.

If he really wanted to go through with taking on the team that was...

As he contemplated his options in regards to the coming ordeal, he continued to study the small scratched bells which made a small soft tinkling noise as his hand continued to shake, knowing full well what they represented. Up until now, these particular bells which had once been the property of Senju Tobirama had been reserved for the Nidaime's teaching line alone, a line he did not belong to. Despite this, the Hokage had handed them to him for use in tomorrow's test, and he knew why. The reason why he'd been given the bells to use despite the fact that he wasn't entitled to was the only non-Uchiha member of his team, and he knew exactly who that boy had belonged to, and quite possibly what the child could become in the future if he had the right teachers along the way.

The question was, was he a good enough teacher for the Yondaime's son? While many would deny that was what Naruto was, he knew of Naruto's not-so-well hidden parentage because he'd caught the previous Uzumaki making out with the Yondaime when he was a kid. Well, actually more than making out, and it had nearly scarred him for life, especially after a few quick calculations a year later had strongly hinted that what he'd accidentally stumbled upon while he'd been hiking had been Naruto's conception.

The Hokage had entrusted him, and - through him - the Uchiha clan with something precious, something far more valuable than an extra allotment of land or a perceived increase in status in the village. Something which very few people recognized as being precious unfortunately, and never bothered trying to calculate the true worth of. Something which he had a feeling that Fugaku-sama wouldn't see beneath the beneath or even just beneath on, and take as yet another insult.

"What have you got there?" an exhausted Itachi who had just come off of a mission asked him when he sat down on the branch next to his, either seeking comfort or advice that he didn't think he would get from his father who didn't seem to understand him and kept trying to push him to even greater heights, to mold him as the next Uchiha Madara in a time when a man like Madara was no longer needed.

Once again, the younger boy who had practically idolized him when he was younger - much like little Sasuke idolized Itachi himself - had managed to sneak up on him without being noticed. This time, he had his apparent preoccupation as an excuse for why he hadn't heard or sensed his cousin's approach.

"I'm going to be testing a group of early graduates tomorrow." he replied as he showed his favorite cousin the bells.

Itachi's eyes widened as he saw them. Amongst certain circles, the Nidaime's bells and the test which went along with them were practically legendary. Itachi had seen them before during his Genin test because his teacher had been one of Jiraiya's students alongside the Yondaime. Unfortunately for his younger cousin, the man was no longer there for Itachi like his former sensei was for him, because he had died in a rather unfortunate accident shortly after Itachi had made Chunin.

"Who's on your team?" Itachi asked, as he continued to stare at the bells which were apparently bringing back memories of the team he'd practically left in the dust in his rapid rise to the ANBU ranks where he was rapidly climbing even higher despite the fact that he wasn't quite ready for the responsibilities that were being heaped upon his small shoulders.

"Hideki, Izuna, _yes, that Izuna_, and Uzumaki Naruto." he replied.

"I see..." Itachi said after a long moment of silence.

What Itachi saw and how many layers of it he saw however were up for debate. Itachi was both a genius and a master at masking his thoughts and emotions, and now, like most times, his face gave nothing away. It was as the old saying went, still waters run deep.

"You should probably get some sleep Shisui-nii." Itachi said as he leaned back against the trunk of the tree which grew above the Hokage Monument that they were sitting in, relaxing, and gazing down at the village that was spread out beneath them. "You'll need to be well rested and on top of your game tomorrow. I've heard that the Uzumaki child has more energy than a daycare full of toddlers on sugar highs."

Wincing at that thought, he decided to follow Itachi's suggestion and hopped out of the tree and headed down into the village that he and Itachi would willingly give their lives to protect in a heartbeat, the village that the rest of their clan had been talking about taking over for years. He still didn't know how he felt about the fact that the talk had started taking the form of definite plans, and that at some point, he would have to choose between his family or the village. As he made his way home, he trudged through mostly silent streets, nodding once to Tekka who was running across the roof of a nearby building on patrol and receiving a nod in return.

Eventually, he reached his place of residence, hopped up to his apartment window, and climbed inside where he got ready for and went to bed. His thoughts remained restless, and as a result, his sleep was fitful.

Early the next morning, he awoke to the sound of a particularly shrill and insistent alarm clock. After a quick shower, a change into the standard Jounin attire that he'd worn maybe a grand total of three or four times since his promotion eight months earlier, and a quick breakfast, he was on his way to Training ground 7 which had been reserved for him for the rest of the day. His students were waiting for him when he arrived. Naruto and Hideki both looked nervous, and Izuna looked put out. From the looks of things, Izuna and Naruto were reasonably well fed, which would put a slight kink in the traditional plans.

Deciding not to waste too much time, he quickly gave his potential students a rundown of the "rules" of the test and got the show on the road, both hoping and praying that his time wouldn't be wasted this time, and apprehensive about what was to come should his time have not been wasted. Being a Jounin Instructor was something of a long-term commitment for a Jounin, since - unless you were completely incompetent at teaching - you were usually responsible for your students for at least a year. Fortunately, the work was generally safe enough to make up for the downsides of being a teacher, and it was almost a given that you'd come home in the evening during peacetime.

After the boys had scattered, he started moving around the training grounds both so as not to make too easy a target of himself and so that he could monitor the boys as they made their plans of attack. As he'd predicted, Naruto and Izuna had remained in close proximity of each-other and Hideki had gone off to do his own thing.

"It's a stupid teamwork test." Izuna was saying to the Uzumaki in the bushes where they had hidden themselves at the start of the test as he passed.

"How do you know that niisan?" the Uzumaki asked from somewhere to Izuna's left.

"Back before, when I was, well, you know, Madara-nii and I may have run into a group of Senju during one of these little tests, killed the adult, and, er, taken the bells as a trophy. Madara used to keep them tied to his fan." Izuna replied.

As he listened to Izuna's story, he wondered yet again what he was getting himself into and whether or not it would be worth it. Hideki was a little below average for a Uchiha, but passable if one was willing to put in the effort. Naruto - aside from that one issue that made him an outcast in the village - was a nice enough boy with a reputation of having a penchant for pulling rather creative pranks, which was tolerable as long as he could curb the boy's prank pulling tendencies enough that he wouldn't fall victim to them. Izuna however...Izuna was something else entirely, and he was beginning to understand why the clan was wary of him.

Back when he was first alive, Izuna had gained a reputation in the clan for having a big heart and being a good man and a lover of peace. It is this reputation and the story of the theft of his eyes by his older brother that had been passed down through the generations after his death. Because of this, most people had forgotten that the man had cut a bloody swathe across the continent at Madara's side. Hearing the child who was no more than roughly seven years of age who housed Izuna's soul casually speak like an old campaigner to whom killing had become second nature long before was disconcerting. Knowing that the boy could and would kill like said old campaigner if he ever felt he had reason to, moved the boy from "disconcerting" to "disturbing and possibly dangerous".

After coming up with a plan to take the bells from him, both Izuna and Naruto had eventually managed to goad Hideki into working with them before the time limit was up. The fact that Hideki was afraid of Izuna, and a bit wary of the Uzumaki child ran counter to the intent of the exercise, but teamwork had been what was called for, and teamwork was what had been displayed. The three of them worked well enough as a unit with Izuna as the leader, which meant that there probably wouldn't be a power struggle between Hideki and Izuna to bring conflict later on.

As he nursed the wounds he'd received during the test, h counted himself somewhat lucky that Izuna hadn't been at a hundred percent because he was still recovering from his appendectomy. Who knew what the boy could have done to him if he'd been at the top of his game, considering the fact that he'd dropped a Chunin less than a day after his release from the hospital.

Hoping and praying that he wasn't making the wrong decision, he passed his new team despite the fact that the teamwork had been somewhat forced on Hideki's part and headed back to the Hokage tower to register them and return the bells which didn't belong to him. Tomorrow, they would meet up to take their official team photo and get some training in in the afternoon so he could attempt to assess exactly what had been handed to him. He had a feeling that it would be nowhere near as nice as it had looked on paper.

* * *

**Author's note: **If anyone would care to do a team picture for the new Genin team, I wouldn't mind seeing it. Remember, Naruto's six, almost seven, Izuna's seven, and Hideki is twelve. Izuna and Hideki both have something of the standard Uchiha features, and since Sasuke looks virtually identical to Izuna when he's sixteen... Shisui is just about a year away from when Itachi drowned him, so he should look about the same as he did in the Manga/Anime.

**Edited 1-21-13**


	14. First Day as a Team

Naruto was in a better mood than Izuna was when it was time to take the official team photo. Naruto grinned as the picture was taken, happy to finally be a ninja as it put him one step closer to his goal. As the photographer snapped the photo, Izuna'nii's arm was slung over his shoulders, and he was smiling as well, but not as happily as he was. The bully Hideki-san was standing a bit off to the side, not touching either of them, and looking rather miserable. Their new sensei, Uchiha Shisui - who was dressed up like most Jounin he'd seen around the village - stood firmly at attention behind them.

Now that the picture was taken, they were officially a team...

After the photo session was complete, there was paperwork that needed to be done, and as soon as the last of the forms were filled out by Shisui-sensei and copies of the team photo were handed out, they were excused for lunch and told to meet up at the training ground that Shisui-sensei had reserved for them at 14:00. Today, being a special day, was also a Ramen Day. It being a Ramen Day, he and Izuna-nii would be pooling their limited resources to get him half as much ramen as he could eat in one sitting, and Izuna a bowl of his favorite ramen and an order of sushi from a nearby restaurant, and a side order of inarizushi.

Izuna-nii had told him that the reason he always got the sushi on special days was because during the first time he was a kid, he could only get his favorite kind of sushi near the coast because shipping the fish that were in it inland was very expensive. The reason Izuna-nii always got the inarizushi was because it had been his older brother Madara's favorite, and it was his way of remembering him. On Ramen days, Izuna-nii would always give him the last piece of inarizushi when he was finished eating.

He liked inarizushi, and being given the last piece made it all the more special since it connected him to someone who was very special to Izuna-nii, but Ichiraku's ramen would always be his favorite.

Naruto liked the Madara that Izuna-nii had described, and wished he could have met him. He was alot less scary than the Madara that the Old Man had described when he told him the story of Konoha's founding and how Uchiha Madara had betrayed the village shortly after. The Madara that Izuna-nii described could be very mean at times, but would always make it up to you, and would always have your back when you needed him, and would go to the ends of the earth to protect those he cared about. The Madara that the Old Man had described had been a bloodthirsty killer who had stolen Izuna-nii's eyes before he died and was brought back, and gotten jealous that Senju Hashirama had been made the Shodai Hokage and tried to murder him. Izuna-nii's Madara was much better.

He knew that things were very hard for Izuna-nii and that he was very sad that his older brother and everything he knew before someone had dragged him out of the Afterlife were gone, and had been for a long time. Because of this, he participated in Izuna-nii's little rituals and did his best to cheer him up and show him that there were things here that could make him happy. But, cheering Izuna-nii up was hard because all the grown-ups in the village gave them ugly looks, and called them names, sometimes behind their backs, and sometimes not, and none of the other kids in the village would play with them. He would continue to do everything in his power to make Izuna-nii happy though because he had promised Izuna-nii and himself that he would always be there for him no matter what happened, and that was a promise that he would never go back on. Izuna-nii had been there for him as far back as he could remember, and he would do his best to return the favor.

When he and Izuna-nii reached Ichiraku's, Mizuki-nii's friend Iruka was there eating his own lunch. The man didn't exactly seem to care for him, but he always did his best to be polite to him when he encountered him for Mizuki-nii's sake.

"Hi Umino-san!" he said cheerfully as he sat down at a nearby stool.

As far as he was concerned, today was a good day, and nothing could ruin it. It wasn't as if Iruka was particularly mean or anything, but he got the impression that the man didn't exactly like him, and was nervous around him for some strange reason. The man didn't give him the cold look that most of the grown-ups in the village gave him when he sat down, but he didn't look too happy to see him there either.

"Hello Naruto-kun." Iruka said before going back to his meal, choosing to ignore his presence as best as he could, which wasn't all that much since Teuchi and his daughter Ayame who was helping her father out today were happy to see him.

"Our usual please." Izuna said politely as soon as he was seated next to him.

"What are you celebrating today?" Teuchi asked.

"The last of the paperwork has been filled out, and Naruto and I are officially on a Genin team." Izuna-nii replied. "Naruto thought it was cause for celebration, and I decided to oblige."

"Really?" Teuchi asked, sounding surprised. "I remember you two celebrating starting at the Academy only a couple of weeks ago."

"We graduated early." Izuna-nii said sourly for some strange reason.

"I see..." Teuchi said after about a minute's silence before rapidly changing the subject. "So, who's your new Sensei?"

"Uchiha Shisui!" he said happily. He liked Shisui-sensei so far. The Uchiha didn't glare at him like most grown-ups did.

"That's funny, I would have thought that Hatake-" Teuchi started, sounding surprised before abruptly clamming up and serving him and Izuna-nii their first and Izuna-nii's only bowl of ramen and sending Ayame out to get Izuna-nii his order of sushi and inarizushi.

"Hatake what?" Izuna-nii asked.

"Nothing." Teuchi replied as he gave him a strange sidelong look.

Eventually, lunch - like all good things - came to an end, and it was time to report to Shisui-sensei for training. Contrary to his expectations, that day's training session didn't go all that well. Shisui-sensei had tested them on the Taijutsu and Ninjutsu and Genjutsu they should have learned at the Academy right off the bat, and Izuna-nii and that mean Hideki kid who had gotten put on their team had passed all of Shisui-sensei's tests with flying colors. Him however...

"What the...?" Shisui-sensei said as he stopped their first spar practically the instant it started.

"What did you expect?" Izuna-nii commented from where he was resting against a tree. "The Uzumaki have always been brawlers, it's like they're wired that way or something. Why do you think they went in for Seals?"

Following the aborted spar, Shisui-sensei shook his head, sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose like Izuna-nii sometimes did before testing him on the Academy jutsu, starting with the Bunshin. After being told to do a Bunshin, he had stood there nervously for a minute trying to figure out a way of getting out of what he'd been asked to do. The one time he'd gotten a Bunshin to appear, it didn't look too good when it had, and promptly died. That had been during his graduation exam. When it became obvious that he wouldn't be weaseling his way out of it, he went through the handseals hoping that it would work this time.

A bunshin appeared after he did the handseals and called up the Chakra necessary for the jutsu. It looked sick like last time. It promptly died and disappeared like last time as well. After it had vanished like the last one he'd created, Shisui-sensei made his eyes have that Sharingan thing all Uchiha have, and ordered him to make another one. This one looked sick as well, and it too died and disappeared.

"He fried it." Shisui-sensei muttered after it vanished, looking and sounding shocked and dismayed. "He fried it."

"Not my fault." Izuna-nii called from where he'd already pulled out a book and started reading. "The Hokage forbade me from teaching him jutsu after we accidentally set the orphanage on fire."

Shisui-sensei looked lost for about a minute following the creation and subsequent death of the Bunshin before he finally regained his wits and whirled to face him and barked "Chakra control exercises, NOW!"

"What are those?" he asked, honestly curious because he'd never heard of them before, or if he'd had, he'd forgotten.

Shisui-sensei groaned and buried his face in his hands.

* * *

Hatake Kakashi had just gotten off of a mission that morning and had spent a number of hours in front of the KIA Memorial remembering those who had passed as he customarily did just about every day he wasn't on a mission following his return. On his way back to the apartment he called home, he had decided to cut through several training grounds since he had nothing better to do that afternoon. Sometimes one of his colleagues would call out for him to join them in their training when he headed home this way, and if he was in the mood, he might. When it came to the training sessions he disrupted by passing through them, just about everyone who hadn't served alongside him more than once or twice was too intimidated by him to say much of anything, and barely protested the disruption in their training routine when he passed.

On this day, he cut through a training ground that was occupied by what looked a bit like a Genin team. It wasn't any team he recognized however, and he knew all of the teams that had passed this year and the year before by sight as any decent ninja should. Apparently, a bunch of kids - two of whom looked old enough to know better - were playing where they shouldn't be.

"So, playing ninja are we?" he said when he shushined up next to the young man who was playing "Sensei" that he vaguely recognized from behind as being either a Chunin or a recently promoted Jounin, catching the group's attention.

"There's no playing about it Hatake." Uchiha Shisui - who was dressed like a Konoha shinobi rather than like a Uchiha like he usually was - replied coldly. "Hokage-sama entrusted me with a team of early graduates."

Following the young Uchiha's statement, his eye flicked between the Uchiha boy who looked to be around the standard Academy graduation age, and the small boy whom he'd know anywhere, since wherever Naruto was, he too would be. It figured that Shisui would be put in charge of the team, considering the fact that two thirds of it were Uchiha. Without any conscious input from him, his eye then strayed towards the small blond who was hanging from a tree branch, and when he processed exactly who it was an intense feeling of fury rose up within him.

The child who was monkeying about in the tree was Naruto. Naruto who was supposed to be **HIS**.

Back before the Kyuubi attack, in that space between Rin's death and Minato-sensei's, he'd promised Minato-sensei that he'd train his then unborn child. That was a promise he had no intention of breaking. It didn't matter that he could barely stand to look at the boy because he was a painful reminder of his loss, and that he'd spent the last couple of years avoiding him every time he was in the area, and that there were times when he blamed the child for Minato-sensei and Kushina-san's deaths. He'd sat there at the counter of Ichiraku's when he, Minato-sensei, and Kushina-san were having lunch there three weeks before the end, and promised Minato-sensei that he would train Naruto, and he was going to keep that promise come hell or high water.

The Hokage had no right handing Naruto off to someone else, and he'd get him back if it was the last thing he did.

As he stood there murderously angry over the fact that Shisui had been given something that he had no right to take, he didn't even notice that he was releasing killing intent, much less the sizable amount that he was. He only came back to his senses when he felt a live kunai being pressed against his throat. The first thing he noticed when he did so was that the angle was strangely off, and that he could feel a pair of feet gripping the back of his vest with Chakra.

"Izuna, let him go." a rather angry looking Uchiha Shisui who had his Sharingan active and a kunai in his own hand said. "I'd let you do it, if I could, but there are too many witnesses who'll twist the story around to suit their own agendas about."

The pressure from the kunai vanished, as did the pressure on and in his back from a pair of small feet, and there was a soft thump behind him as his would-be attacker landed, most likely on his feet, based on the sound.

"You'd best be going now Hatake." Shisui said coldly as he put his own weapon away. "And, if you think you can threaten one of my students...Well, let's just say that I have a number of friends on the police force that would also be glad to see you gone."

"That," he replied when he realized that he'd been releasing a great deal of Killing Intent in his fury, "That wasn't meant for Naruto who, by the way, does not belong to you."

Realizing the situation he was in, and what would happen if he killed Shisui like he wanted to at the moment, he quickly left the area before something that couldn't be taken back happened. Naruto most likely wouldn't be too happy with him if he killed his future ex-sensei right in front of him after all.

**Edited 1-21-13**


	15. D Rank Hell

Izuna snarled as he pulled another "weed" out of the ground of a civilian woman's garden. An older cousin of his and Madara-nii's had taught them a bit of herb lore when they were little alongside the traditional lessons on which plants were edible and which weren't, and this was yet another medicinal plant that was going to waste because it didn't look as pretty as the rose bushes that the woman was growing, or what was going to be planted on the barren plot of earth Naruto and Hideki were weeding come Spring. The roots of this particular plant were good for reducing fevers in small children if prepared properly. The plants that Naruto and Hideki were pulling up were traditionally used in poultices that were placed over battlefield injuries because they helped prevent infection.

This was his third D ranked mission since he had become a Genin a week before, and it sucked just as badly as the other two had. Autumn had gotten its start and, as such, it was the season for sending the Genin teams out to rake leaves amongst other things, such as pulling weeds in preparation for Spring as he and his team were doing now.

His first D rank had been cleaning leaves and other debris out of fountains that would just be filled with litter again in a few days in one of the village's numerous parks. He had the feeling that the guys in charge of handing out missions had picked the filthiest fountains for his team to clean out, as the trash filled stone monstrosities that were relics of a style that he'd been happy to miss out on had been in one of the scruffiest parks in one of the worst districts in Konoha. The broken-down things that had been filled with stagnant water had smelled as if they'd been used as toilets rather than fountains for the last few decades or so, and he had a sneaking suspicion as to who by as the bushes in the surrounding park were filled with an encampment of homeless people.

The second mission had been less dirty than the first, but had been filled with tedious and back-breaking labor, and he had a sneaking suspicion that the pay that he'd received for the yardwork the team had done at the Uchiha Clan Head's residence three days ago had come out of Shisui's own pocket. He had no illusions that Fugaku wasn't trying to put him in his place and rub his nose in the fact that he was no longer Co-Head of the Uchiha Clan when he'd requested the team for that particular mission. The man had made any number of comments along those lines every time they encountered each-other.

The chores and other menial tasks that D-Ranked missions consisted of were demeaning as well as annoying, but not as annoying as the knowledge of where this particular tradition of initiating the newbies had come from. Doing chores like this and calling them missions had been the Senju method of getting the kids out of the way during times of potential conflict by sending them out on useless "missions" that the civilians who paid for them could've done themselves. That should be something to be expected though, since the village was dominated by the Senju philosophy, and the Senju methods of doing things, despite the fact that the Senju were virtually extinct. Sure, there were a few Uchiha traditions thrown in here and there for flavoring but, the entire village was basically a Senju encampment in which he was trapped since he had nowhere else to go.

In contrast to his own dark mood, Naruto seemed reasonably happy with the way things were going. But, Naruto would be happy if you dumped him out in the snow and told him to go on a thousand mile hike as long as you asked nicely. Hell, Naruto would be happy in Hell itself if someone there showed him the least bit of kindness. He wasn't nearly as happy with the situation he knew he was trapped in however.

Despite the fact that he generally didn't let on that he knew, he was well aware of the fact that if he didn't want people trying to hunt him down for the rest of his life or to try capturing him in order to force him to breed Uchiha for their village, he was trapped here. Especially since, despite the fact that he currently had the knowledge of someone who was at about Jounin level, he didn't have the physical strength or the muscle memory, or even the Chakra reserves to go with it. At best, he could surprise a few Chunin or particularly unobservant Jounin with a few old tricks they hadn't seen before because they'd fallen out of use over the years.

Despite its happy appearance, Konoha had quite the dark side, a dark side that wouldn't be afraid to swallow him up if he stepped too far out of line. Though his memories from his arrival in Konoha were vague and fuzzy when compared to the memories of his previous lifetime which kept coming in randomly as he associated something he was experiencing with something that had taken place in his past, he clearly remembered being dragged to the T&I department for interrogation amongst other things. He couldn't understand why it was happening to him at the time, but he could easily guess now.

It all came back to Naruto.

Because he hadn't been all too concerned about it before, and hadn't focused all that much on Konoha's recent history when he read since he'd always preferred adventure stories to more academic literature, and the adventure stories he'd read were usually set either around the founding of the village, or during one of the numerous wars if they had a historical setting, it had taken him years to piece things together. And, that had only been after he'd been forced to focus on the village's more recent history because knowledge of it was necessary for an Academy graduate. If he hadn't decided to study the Academy curriculum during his free time so he and Naruto didn't miss anything thanks to their early graduations, it would probably have taken longer or not been done at all.

Add a Biju attack, and Uzumaki Sealing skills, mix thoroughly, and what do you get?

Answer, Uzumaki Naruto.

The orphanage had placed them both in the same room because they had been unwanted because of things that had been beyond their control, and because they hadn't wanted them to interact with the other children who were living there at the time. The staff at the orphanage hadn't really been expecting him to bond with the other boy whom they had seen as being unlovable. The Hokage had been counting on it however.

The question was why?

Why would the Hokage who was so overprotective of the boy that he'd sent a three year-old to the T&I department do everything he could to get them to become attached to each-other without being overtly blatant about it? Why was it that the secret watchers that neither he nor Naruto were supposed to be aware of went on high alert every time either he activated his Sharingan around the boy or Yashiro-san dropped by? Why was he associating those two things?

Shit.

Of course.

Madara-nii. The Valley of the End where he was finally felled by Senju Hashirama's hand. The Kyuubi. The Kyuubi which reappeared seven years ago this week and went on a rampage through Konoha. They thought a Uchiha was responsible. That's why they were nervous when Naruto hung around one of the older Uchiha, that's why the Hokage had been hoping he'd become attached to the boy. If he was attached, he would be less likely to murder the child in order to release the beast which he had only the vaguest ideas as to how to control.

Unfortunately for him but fortunately for Naruto's continued survival, he was attached to the boy as the Hokage had planned. There was something that the Hokage hadn't planned however. Naruto was** HIS**.If anyone tried to take him away from him - even if it was the Hokage himself - they would pay, and pay dearly. If he wasn't able to make them pay, he was reasonably certain that Naruto would.

Speaking of people who wanted to take his Naruto away, the Hatake was once again following them. The day he'd shown up to nearly murder Shisui over the fact that the teen had been given Naruto as a student wasn't the first time he'd seen the man. He'd caught sight of the man in his peripheral vision a few times over the years, and every time he did, it followed the same pattern. The man would stare at Naruto for a while, but if he ever led Naruto over in his direction, he would vanish. Until Naruto had been placed under Shisui, he hadn't seen the man all that often, so he hadn't gotten marked down as a potential threat. Now however, the Hatake most definitely was on the list. He didn't know what the man's obsession with Naruto was, but he knew nothing good would come of it.

Sighing as he brought himself back to the present, he threw another "weed" on the pile of wasted plants, and got up to go over to where the man was lounging, not even bothering to attempt concealing himself in any way, as if he didn't care who knew he was there.

"You're unwanted here, so get lost! Dattebane!" he said when he was less than three feet away from the man, making sure there was no doubt as to who he was talking to.

For some reason he could not fathom, the man's single visible eye widened, and there was an expression on what little he could see of the man's face that was much like the expressions he'd seen on a number of other faces when that particular verbal tic slipped because he was stressed, annoyed, or excited. He didn't know what it was about that tic which Naruto had picked up on, but he'd been practically interrogated about what he could remember of his family by Teuchi, Fugaku, and a few others, including that Councilwoman Koharu because of it.

"She couldn't have..." the Hatake said. "There was no time, and..."

"Whatever, get lost -ttebane!" he said.

Surprisingly, instead of sticking around to spite him like he had taken to doing lately, the Hatake wandered off, seemingly lost in his own little world, muttering things about seals, and how it was impossible because there had been no time as he did so.

"What is it with everybody, and that stupid verbal tic I've been trying to get rid of for two lifetimes now?" he asked himself.

"I always thought it was an Uzumaki thing." Shisui said, slipping from the shadowy corner where he'd concealed himself, prepared to jump in if the confrontation between him and the Hatake had turned nasty.

"Uzumaki thing?" he asked. His mother whom he'd supposedly inherited the tic from - at least according to Madara-nii - had been a Uchiha.

"The Habanero used to do it when she was upset or excited, which was practically all the time from what I remember." Shisui replied as the kunai he'd been holding disappeared into one of his numerous pockets.

"The Habanero?" he asked, wondering at the story behind that nickname. It must have been one hell of a doozy.

Shisui made the handsign for "Mother", and pointed at Naruto.

"How'd you know her?" he asked. Based on the way Shisui behaved towards Naruto, he hadn't been the woman's student, and he seemed a touch too young to have fought alongside her on the battlefield during the last war, if she'd fought in the last war.

"I was a few years younger than her boyfriend's student who was a cousin of mine that I'd occasionally hang out with since he was one of the few members of the clan who still played ninja with the kids after he became a Genin, despite the fact that he constantly got lectured about his "disgraceful behaviour" over it. Because of that, I occasionally ran into her and her boyfriend when me and Obito hung out together." Shisui replied, clearly looking as if he were hiding something, or holding something back at the very least.

"Funny that you don't mention them by name, considering the fact that you knew them." he said, finding it somewhat odd that he'd never heard Naruto's parents mentioned by name before, even by the Hokage.

"You'll find that no-one who knew them as his parents will, including Obito's former teammate." Shisui said as he made a vague gesture towards where the Hatake had departed. "And, should you discover their names, you won't either."

**Edited 1-21-13**


	16. Plots and Secrets

At the end of yet another day of training and chores disguised as missions, Naruto climbed up the side of the apartment building he lived in, headed towards the window of the apartment he shared with Izuna, happy to have finally gotten the tree climbing exercise down to a point that Shisui-sensei considered acceptable. Receiving praise for something he'd done felt good, and he hoped to receive lots more of it from his sensei in the future. Being a ninja wasn't the best thing in the world, but it wasn't the worst either, and Shisui-sensei liked him, which was a bonus. Izuna-nii wasn't happy with being a ninja though, which wasn't.

Izuna-nii had been downright miserable since becoming a ninja, and with each passing day, his mood got worse and worse. He'd even seen Izuna-nii shoot the Hokage Monument several dark glares. Shisui-sensei finally told him to stop doing that, especially when there were people about. But, Izuna-nii didn't stop, and did it when he was reasonably certain that Shisui-sensei wasn't looking instead.

Maybe, it was the D ranked missions that were making Izuna-nii unhappy. The Old Man wouldn't give them anything better no matter how much he begged and pleaded though. He himself had been unhappy to discover that you didn't start off fighting bandits and rescuing princesses on the first day. It was probably harder for Izuna-nii who remembered fighting bandits and rescuing princesses to adjust, because the missions were several steps down for him. Lots and lots of steps down.

Even though they seemed to make Izuna-nii upset, he hadn't minded the D ranks all that much. The chores sucked, and some people tried to make them harder for their team, but there were other things besides the pay he'd received to make up for it. Shisui-sensei had let him jump on another Genin team's leaf pile while they'd gone to get the bags they'd forgotten and no-one else was looking after they'd finished with the fountains. The fact that Shisui-sensei didn't like the other Jounin probably had something to do with it, but it had still been nice of him, especially since he'd grabbed him off of the mess he'd made of the pile shortly before the other team returned rather than let him get caught. The mean Police Chief guy's wife had been nice too. She'd even snuck him some hot tea when her husband wasn't watching, and gave him a pair of warm gloves that her son Sasuke had outgrown.

"Shoes off before you enter the window!" Izuna-nii who had reached the apartment before him by using a Shunshin barked as he was about to climb in through the window.

Sitting on the windowsill removing his sandals, he was given a near unparalleled view of a large portion of Konoha and the preparations which were being made for tomorrow. Tomorrow was the seventh anniversary of the Kyuubi attack, and it was also his birthday. The anniversary of the attack was a time for remembrance and reflection for the people of Konoha, as well as the day of the year that the glares and whispers that constantly surrounded him were at their worst. Since Shisui-sensei had given them tomorrow off, he didn't plan on going out. Besides, there was a reason to stay in the apartment since Izuna-nii had something planned for his birthday.

He didn't know what Izuna had planned for tomorrow or what his present was going to be since he hadn't been able to find where Izuna-nii had hidden his present this year like he had last year, but it was sure to be good. But, there was one thing that was marring the potential happiness of his upcoming birthday however...

"Izuna-nii, why are you unhappy?" he asked as he watched people decorate the village in somber colors in preparation for tomorrow's memorial ceremony which he and Izuna-nii would be skipping, considering what had happened last year when they'd attended for the first time. Being yelled at by an angry drunk hadn't been fun.

Izuna-nii sighed behind him where he was getting a start on getting dinner ready. The old man had replaced the electric stove with a gas one a while back under the condition that Izuna-nii used the lights instead of candles, which Izuna-nii had interpreted to mean that he should turn on the lights when he heard the Old Man was in the area and hide the candles when he visited. He put up with Izuna-nii's odd behaviour because it made sense. After that story he'd heard about that guy who'd gotten electrocuted while doing some work on his house, he could understand why Izuna-nii was afraid of the lights, and the fridge, and the electric kettle which he'd donated to the orphanage the instant the Old Man's back was turned, since throwing it out would have been a waste.

"It's a long story." Izuna-nii finally replied as he set the rice to cooking over a ring of yellow and blue flames that he thought were prettier than the coil things on the old stove. "Basically, it all boils down to the fact that the Hokages weren't and aren't the paragons of virtue that you've been raised to believe them to be, and the fact that if I value my life, I'm stuck here."

Izuna-nii's answer confused him and frightened him. Didn't Izuna-nii want to be here? Did Izuna-nii really like him, or was he just pretending to like him? Why would Izuna-nii pretend to like him? Did anyone really like him, or was he really unlovable like the Matron from the orphanage said he was?

"It's not your fault Naruto." Izuna-nii said as he came up to him and hugged him. "None of it ever was."

"But..." he started, not knowing what he was going to say next. There were so many questions running through his mind that it was too hard to pick one to start with.

"You've had enough blame for things you didn't do and things you had no control over heaped on your shoulders, and I won't be adding to it." Izuna-nii said, still holding him. "If you notice, most of the other Uchiha aren't happy here either. They know that they too are stuck here, and that the time when they could have left has long since passed. That's why they're planning something they know is suicide because it's far better to die fighting than on one's knees. As for whether or not I'll join them when the time comes...I don't know."

"What do you mean?" he asked, not liking the sound of what Izuna-nii was saying.

"It's a secret I can't share with you. If you know and don't tell, you could be put in prison or worse. If you do tell, a large number of people will die, including people you care about, and I don't want to put that on your shoulders on top of everything else." Izuna-nii replied. "I'm not the only one who is uncertain as to whether or not they want to go through with things though, so it may come to pass that passions will cool, plans will be shelved, and nothing will actually happen, especially if the Hokage makes a certain set of concessions that I've heard are in the works."

He felt sick. Whatever it was that Izuna-nii was talking about, he just knew it was bad. Very, very, bad, and that something bad would happen to Izuna-nii if people knew he was mixed up in it.

* * *

Izuna growled as he began preparing dinner after trying to comfort Naruto and further worrying the child instead by saying far too much. Naruto just had to ask, and he'd just had to burden the child with worries that no child that age should be burdened with. Two years ago, even a year ago, he probably would've refused to even consider what he was considering now out of hurt over the rejection he had suffered from those who were supposed to be family. With the way the village had treated him and the one he'd adopted as family however...

Yashiro had spilled everything to him a couple weeks earlier when he had come to him with his doubts about the plans that were being made, and had sought his advice in the matter, needing an outside perspective, and being unable to speak of what was going on with an actual outsider who could betray his confidence and that of the rest of the clan in turn.

With Madara-nii gone, all he had left in regards to blood kin were the descendants of the men and women he had fought alongside in his prior lifetime. Despite the fact that the living members of the clan considered him an outcast, he still considered himself a Uchiha and, as a Uchiha, his first loyalty was to the clan. With his first loyalty being towards the clan which was his family, his blood, what he was supposed to do in regards to the plans that were in the works should be a forgone conclusion despite the fact that he despised the current Head of the clan who was one of the main driving forces behind them.

He wasn't the only Uchiha who was torn between duty towards family, and other obligations, and therefore weren't certain that they would follow through when the suicidal call to attack came. He'd seen the apprehension in Yashiro's eyes as he told him everything when he'd come seeking answers, the sadness in Shisui's as he watched his team train, and the worry in Mikoto's as she walked through the streets of the village holding her younger son's hand. While he held a faint hope that things would be settled peacefully, and that the Uchiha would get the equal stake in the village that they'd been promised at the Founding, he didn't cling to it too tightly. With an uncompromising bastard holding the Hokage's ear on one side, and a stubborn and arrogant man like Fugaku who had the clan elders who had a number of grievances to air behind him driving things on the other, chances were that things were going to come to a head in a year or two. He - like everyone else in the clan - could see it, and it worried a good number of them, himself included.

With what was coming soon, he knew that he would have to prepare Naruto for what was coming, regardless of whatever decision he made, or whatever side of the divide he fell on. One of the ways he would do that would be to tell Naruto the bits about the Senju that they had left out of the history books in order to whitewash history, and possibly make the Uchiha seem worse by comparison. There had been atrocities committed by either side during the generations long war between the clans that would make even the most bloodthirsty of ninjas sick. There had been enough blood spilled between the two clans that even the most violent members of each had finally gotten sick of war, and that had probably been why his own clan had jumped at the first chance for peace despite its hidden price-tag. A price that the Uchiha were now paying, three or four generations down the line.

There had been a number of incidents that had stuck in his memory over the years, but the one that had left the deepest impression on him had taken place when he and Madara-nii had been small children. His and Madara-nii's father hadn't been supposed to fight that day since he had been sent home to recover from injuries that had been sustained on the battlefield, but a force of Senju had flanked around the ninja who had been defending the compound they had been living in at the time, and started attacking the civilians who had been living there directly. A large number of people lost their lives that day, most of them elderly or small children, and that massacre had sparked the worst fighting between the clans in generations.

Naruto should hear these things from him before he got a highly edited pro-Senju version of them from the Old Man who was trying to instill the "Will of Fire" in the boy so he could understand what was going on, and how it had been simmering for generations just waiting for something to cause it to boil over. Despite the fact that history was written by the victors, the grudges held by the losing side didn't just vanish. What the Uchiha clan was planning - which he may or may not participate in if it ever came to pass - was proof of that.

**Edited 1-21-13**


	17. The Beginning of the End

There are many things that can bond a group together, and one of them is food. As the saying goes, "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach.". In this case, it had been a forgotten lunch that had caused Hideki to go from that poor sucker who got stuck on a team with **THEM**, to being Naruto's friend, and a recognized member of Izuna's family, as well as a teammate in both their eyes.

It hadn't been Hideki who had provided the food however.

You see, unlike Fugaku and Mikoto who had pretty much settled down and stayed in the village with Mikoto keeping house after they married and started a family, Hideki's parents were both still active ninja, despite the fact that they were both nearing the end of the average life expectancy for such. Usually, the two of them would schedule things so that one of them would be home with the kid while the other was away on a mission, but now that Hideki was a Genin, they both felt free to both be on missions at the same time so they could bring in more income in preparation for their eventual retirement. That generally left Hideki - who both viewed as a disappointment - to his own devices.

As far as they were concerned, because Hideki was now a Genin, he was old enough to look after himself, and it wasn't as if he needed their help with his training since, if one of the clan's top ninja couldn't help him, nobody could...

The problem with the decision his parents had made without consulting him was that Hideki - who had had at least one of his parents taking care of him at all times as far back as he could remember - had little to no idea how to take care of himself. Thanks to an oversight at the Academy, cooking on anything other than an open fire was only covered in the Kunoichi classes, which meant that he had absolutely no idea as to how to do so. Fortunately for him however, his mother had left some leftovers and things that could be eaten raw in the fridge before she left for her mission, which meant that he wouldn't starve before she or his father got back.

Hideki had prepared himself a lunch from the leftovers his mother had left in the fridge on the day in question, a lunch which promptly became absolutely useless because he had left it out on the counter when he realized that he was running late and raced out the door. Throughout the rest of that day Hideki - who had pretty much never missed a meal in his entire life - began to learn what it was like to go hungry, as he had woken up too late to prepare breakfast and had planned on using his lunch as a combination of both.

It had been because of that unaccustomed feeling of hunger that had been gnawing at his belly all throughout the day's training and that day's sucky D-Rank that had involved feeding some ill-tempered geese that he had accepted rather than rejected Naruto's customary invitation to dinner which he had previously turned down with extreme prejudice every other time it had been made. By the time time for dinner came around, he had been exceedingly nervous since Izuna had given him enough "friendly warnings" about what should happen should he misbehave during that evening to scare a normal man shitless. There was food though, which was what mattered the most to Hideki at that point, as he'd gone all day without eating which - for one of the modern Uchiha who had not yet been out in the field - was practically starving to death.

Along with the food, there had been conversation, conversation that had been stilted at first but had flowed more easily as the evening progressed. With conversation came understanding. With understanding, the team had become more cohesive. In any other situation, this would have been a good thing. In this one however...In this one, Fate had given the team only a few short months of something approaching happiness before half the team died a couple months before Naruto turned eight.

Shisui's death marked the beginning of the end.

Actually, the day Tobi showed up marked the beginning of the end, but Hideki would never know that, as he would never see Tobi. All Hideki would really know before he died was that something was brewing in his clan, and that he hadn't been stuck on such a bad team after all.

The day Tobi had turned up had been like any other. The sun had risen, they had gotten ready for the day, and had met at their usual training ground. After coming together, the team had trained for a while in the morning and took a D Rank for the pay more than anything in the afternoon. After the mission which had taken longer than usual and had ended well after sunset was over and the team had been paid, Naruto and Izuna had gone back to their apartment to find a stranger sitting there waiting for them.

The fact that the man had been wearing a mask had been odd, but not too odd considering some of Konoha's other eccentric residents, amongst which was a man who went out wearing only a Genjutsu over what he'd been given at birth a few decades before. The long spiky black hair had been somewhat familiar, but was common to too large a number of people in the village who wore theirs in a wide variety of ways to narrow it down enough to make an identification in regards to the intruder. The eyes however had marked the man as a Uchiha, which was very odd as far as Izuna was concerned since he could recognize all members of the Uchiha clan on sight and the man sitting on the dresser wasn't one of them.

Naruto, being the brave and outgoing boy that he was, had been the one to ask the stranger who he was and what he was doing there. Instead of giving an honest answer, the man had tried to pass himself off as Madara, but Izuna immediately spotted him for the fake he was despite the fact that he still had sizable chunks of his memory missing and called him on it. Aside from the fact that the hair was wrong, there had been something about the man's posture that was just the slightest bit...off.

"I am Madara-sama's representative in this world until his resurrection so, for all intents and purposes, I am Madara-sama." the man replied when Izuna had called the man on his lie. "You may call me Tobi however."

"Why are you here?" Naruto asked again, more curious than alarmed by the man's presence, because nobody who had wished either of them harm had ever made their way into the apartment before, as there were a number of protections on the apartment and in the surrounding area which the boy was mostly unaware of that had previously kept any and all potential threats out.

"I am here because I was...curious." the man replied, his eyes never once leaving Izuna.

"Curious?" Naruto asked the stranger who had intruded upon his and Izuna's personal space while Izuna continued to analyze the situation, unsure of what was going on, but sensing that the man who had broken into their apartment was dangerous.

"I knew that Madara-sama had been up to something near the end." the man said, "But, I had never suspected him of such...sentimentality."

Apparently done with answering Naruto's questions, the man got up from where he had been perched on the dresser and moved to leave the apartment. Rather than block his way, Izuna cleared himself from the man's path because he wanted the man gone, and as quickly as possible at that.

"Has your curiosity been satisfied?" Izuna asked as the man headed towards the door.

"I've never known Madara-sama to do something without reason." the man replied over his shoulder as he departed. "You're obviously meant to serve some purpose, whether or not that purpose is the same one that you originally served remains to be seen. Either way, you can count yourself lucky because you're off the list."

"List?" Naruto asked as the door shut behind the stranger who had broke into the apartment.

"Don't know, don't care." Izuna said before tossing the apartment for any surprises the man may have left behind, and throwing all of the food in the apartment into the trash.

"Why are you throwing the food out?" Naruto cried in horror as Izuna tossed out the cup ramen that the boy was just a bit too obsessed with.

"He was in here for who knows how long." Izuna replied as he grabbed the bag from the trash and started hauling it towards the dumpster. "With a man like that, you can't trust him to not have tried anything."

"A man like that?" Naruto asked as he followed Izuna down.

"You'll learn to see it eventually. Despite the fact that the signs are similar, rather than being slightly dysfunctional like that Hatake person, "Tobi" has gone straight through crazy and come out on the other side." Izuna replied as he finished making his way down the stairs and outside towards the dumpster.

The encounter with Tobi had been a short one, seemingly meaningless, but with what came after, Izuna and Naruto would mark it as the beginning of the end. Both knew that Itachi couldn't have killed the entire Uchiha clan by himself, and both had remembered the list comment, and the fact that it had been Izuna's name which had been crossed off of it, Izuna who could arguably be considered Uchiha by anyone who wanted to destroy the clan for whatever reason.

They both knew the madman Tobi had been involved in the destruction of their team and the death of the Uchiha clan, but Izuna suspected that others had been complicit as well. Others who were in high places. The Uchiha who'd been courting death for years hadn't been as discreet about their plans as they thought, and he knew it.

Before the Massacre though, there had been a brief period of relative happiness, a brief period of time out of a difficult life that both Izuna and Naruto had looked back on fondly. It wasn't the happiest they'd been, nor the happiest they would be in the future, but it was a time of relative contentment in a life that was rather short of such, a brief period of peace that could be remembered fondly during the struggles that were to come.

Rather than being a fifth wheel like he'd initially been, Hideki had become a part of that. Hideki had found people who had accepted him for who and what he was rather than who and what people thought he should be because he was Uchiha. The fact that two of Hideki's three teammates were also Uchiha had made him feel better about himself, because there had been very few members of his clan who had accepted him for him, and his parents hadn't been amongst them no matter how willing they had been to avenge any harm that came to him through the actions of "Outsiders", even going so far as to yell at the Clan Head for his perceived inaction. That of course made it all the more tragic when he died.

**Edited 1-21-13**


	18. At a Funeral

The day that marked the end of the team, served as an omen for the end of the Uchiha clan, and presaged the war that would come nearly a decade later had been deceptively normal. The sun had been shining, the birds had been singing, and Konoha hadn't been any tenser than usual as its citizens went about their normal daily routines. The only sign that there might have been something wrong that day had been the fact that Shisui hadn't turned up to the team training session that he'd scheduled and hadn't sent anyone to inform them that training had been cancelled as he had the one time he'd been forced to cancel before.

Not knowing that there wouldn't be any training that day, and that they would never again be receiving any training from their sensei, the team waited for hours wondering if Shisui's continued absence was a bizarre test in patience until Hatake Kakashi finally showed up around nightfall and informed them that Uchiha Shisui had been found dead in the Naka River. Izuna had glared at the Hatake suspiciously when he had imparted this information, as he wouldn't have put it past the man who had somehow become convinced that he was Naruto's mother back from the dead to have killed Shisui in order to get Naruto with whom he'd become somewhat obsessed despite the fact that he'd ignored the boy for the first seven years of his life and had actually gone out of his way to avoid him during that same period. Fortunately for the Hatake's chances of continued survival however, there was another potential suspect for Shisui's murder running around the village, a batshit insane suspect named Tobi who had claimed that he was working on some grand plan of Madara-nii's.

Neither Izuna, Naruto, nor Hideki had believed for one second that Shisui had killed himself when they'd been told that that had been what happened despite the fact that there had been a suicide note that had ostensibly been written by him left behind. They differed on who they thought had killed Shisui however, with Hideki following the clan's suspicions about the one who had been the last to see him alive. Izuna who had encountered Itachi on a number of occasions and had found a kindred spirit who was tired of war but forced to fight because he could see no other option did not believe that the boy was the one responsible for Shisui's demise however, and Naruto had been of the opinion that it had been Kakashi, since he'd found the man who had followed the team around when he was between missions to be rather scary.

About a week after Shisui's demise, a week during which the team occasionally met up wondering what would happen to them now since their sensei had died and nobody had yet stepped forward to fill that gap, almost the entire Uchiha clan - including Yashiro and Hideki - were slaughtered. Following the massacre, the only remnants of the clan left in the village were Izuna and Uchiha Sasuke who had been hospitalized because of the trauma he had gone through that night. Izuna had brought Naruto to visit the boy at the hospital shortly afterward only to find that the boy had adopted his father's attitude towards him as his own, and refused to speak with him in anything approaching a civil manner.

Both of the boys had of course shown up to the mass funeral that had been held for the Uchiha clan as the thought of missing it hadn't occurred to either of them. Because there hadn't been interest in holding individual funerals for each member of the clan, and there hadn't been time to space the funerals out, that was the only funeral that Yashiro and Hideki would be getting and missing Yashiro and Hideki's funeral was unthinkable to either of them.

* * *

Umino Iruka didn't really know why he'd turned up at the Uchiha funeral aside from the fact that Mizuki couldn't be there and someone would have to tell his friend what had happened during the service that he'd missed, but would have attended if he could since one of his few friends was amongst the deceased. If it hadn't been for Mizuki, he most likely wouldn't have shown up because he didn't really know all that many Uchiha personally, and hadn't really been on friendly terms with any of the ones he did. When it came to Uchiha Yashiro, who had been the Uchiha he was on the friendliest terms with before the Massacre, he'd only known him from the number of times he'd encountered him when he'd went to see Mizuki and found the two hanging out with Naruto and Izuna, but that was about it.

When he'd turned up at the funeral, a crying Naruto who had been standing next to a stone-faced Izuna had latched onto him because he was the only familiar and relatively friendly face amongst the attendees aside from his surrogate older brother who was apparently too caught up in his own grief to comfort the child. He felt somewhat guilty as he stood there and allowed the small boy to cry into his shirt because it had taken the deaths of about half the people that had cared for the boy, and whom the boy cared for in return for him to see what Mizuki had spotted in the Uzumaki child nearly three years ago. Aside from the fact that he'd had the Kyuubi sealed inside him, Naruto was a relatively normal boy with normal wants and needs, a relatively normal boy who had been shunned by virtually the entire village for something he couldn't help. Rather than helping the situation, he'd been making it worse by trying to pull one of the few people who had been in the boy's corner away from him out of his resentment over the deaths of his parents which hadn't been the boy's fault.

It was amazing how self absorbed he could be without realizing it. Not only had he not noticed that Naruto was just a lonely child who needed people to care for him, but he hadn't even noticed the pain his own best friend had been in for years. Up until the day that Mizuki had come to him and opened himself up to him completely, showing him himself as he truly was - both the good and the bad - he'd had no idea that his best friend since childhood had been bottling up all of that rage and jealousy for so many years. He - like everyone who didn't know about that incident involving his teammate - had bought the kindly facade that the man had shown to the world at large.

In many ways, his and Mizuki's friendship had grown stronger since that day, and if his friend hadn't opened up to him, that wouldn't have happened, because he wouldn't have otherwise noticed what his friend really was going through.

Mizuki should have been here where he was standing, especially since Uchiha Yashiro had been something of a friend of his, but he was away on a mission. Two weeks earlier, his friend had left for yet another long and difficult mission that would get him absolutely nowhere, because even his superiors seemed to think that he had killed his teammate despite the fact that it couldn't be proven because it hadn't happened. Because Mizuki wasn't here, and Izuna was standing off to the side, lost in his own little world as he coldly stared at the freshly dug graves, he was the only one who could, or rather was willing to comfort the sobbing child who had been amongst the few who had bothered to attend the mass funeral for the Uchiha clan.

* * *

In the end, Izuna would never truly know which side of the divide he would have fallen on should a coup have come to pass, which was something that would bother him to no end. The possibility that he would turn his back on his clan for a village he didn't love hurt despite the fact that his clan had turned their backs on him first. There were few people in Konoha who he would have been willing to fight to the death for because they made living in the village somewhat tolerable, and most of them had been Uchiha.

The Uchiha were gone now, all of them gone. Even the survivors had died in their own ways. From what he'd seen during his short visit to the hospital to see him, the kind yet spoiled child that Uchiha Sasuke had been was replaced by someone who was too hard and bitter for his young years, and Itachi had been driven mad by the murder of his kin. Itachi's insanity was apparent in the way he had spared his younger brother, and drove him to hate him, to want to kill him because he felt he didn't deserve to regain what little honor he had left by doing the right thing and killing himself. It didn't matter what side of the divide they would have ultimately fallen on, or even why they would have gone through with the coup if they had not been slaughtered, the Uchiha clan was gone, and there was only him left to observe its traditions which would otherwise be lost with it.

As he stood there staring at the dozens upon dozens of freshly dug graves that had recently been filled by those who had been his blood, his rage burned so hot it was cold, or so cold that it burned him much as a flame would. It didn't matter either way. He knew who was responsible for these deaths, or at least some of the people who had been responsible for these deaths, and his rage would be burning them as well, but not in quite the same way it burned within him.

It was obvious to him that the peace loving Itachi who had been forced into a career that dealt death and destruction had been a pawn in this. There had been something that someone could hold over Itachi's head to get him to cooperate, and that something was the same thing that someone could've held over Madara-nii's head long ago. Itachi and Sasuke had been like he and Madara-nii had been when they were young. It had to have been that Tobi that he'd run into, the man who had attempted to pass himself off as Madara-nii, and then as Madara-nii's living avatar until he was resurrected at the right time for something important when he had revealed that he knew the man to be an impostor who had held Sasuke's survival over Itachi's head.

Tobi and his pawn Itachi had obviously had help from somewhere in the upper echelons of the village in order to pull the massacre off. Otherwise, those that had been observing the Uchiha compound lately would have sounded the alarm when the first body had hit the ground, and Tobi and Itachi would have been forced to fend off half of Konoha's forces as well as whatever members of the clan hadn't been taken by surprise.

The Hokage?

No, this wasn't his style. The Hokage was too soft-hearted, and had a tendency to spare potential risks even though they could turn around and blow up in his face later. It was more his style to turn a blind eye to what was going on for the sake of preserving a peace that was tenuous at best, and for the sake of harmony within the village. Ironically, this tendency to turn a blind eye was yet another thing which could blow up in the old man's face.

It would have had to have been someone close to the Hokage who had arranged things that night, someone who had authority with the ANBU that was nearly on par with the Hokage's own, since the ANBU who ran a suspicious number of patrols past the Uchiha clan compound hadn't come to the aid of the Uchiha when the compound had gone unnaturally silent.

Who it was was immaterial at the moment, but soon they would be dead. If it was the last thing he did, he would kill that Tobi bastard, and his accomplice within the village, Madara-nii's alleged plans be damned. He'd kill Itachi as well, but in Itachi's case, it would be a mercy kill. Tobi however, Tobi was dead, and in the slowest and most painful way possible, his body just hadn't caught up to that fact.

**Edited 1-22-13**


	19. Life Goes On

Kakashi sighed as he turned away from the memorial stone and headed towards the red bridge near Training Ground 7 where he was to meet his two new students. The circumstances under which he'd acquired Naruto as a student had been decidedly less than ideal, and while he'd been upset over the fact that Shisui had been given Naruto when he shouldn't have, he hadn't wished actual death on the teen...

Alright, he had, but not in the manner that poor Shisui had died. He wouldn't have ripped the boy's eyes out for one...

After Shunshin no Shisui's untimely demise, he had been the only Jounin willing to take Shisui's surviving students on, and really, he had only wanted one of them, the one he'd promised Minato-sensei he would train. "Izuna" didn't need him, and could take care of her- himself.

He knew that "Izuna" was unhappy with him, and that he'd failed any number of the tests that sh- he'd set before him, but he hadn't been ready to see Naruto again back then. Seeing Naruto now still hurt, but realizing that the boy could and had been taken away from him had hurt worse.

Over the years, "Izuna" had tried to introduce Naruto to the boy who had stood there and promised her and Minato-sensei that he would take care of their son should anything happen to them any number of times only to watch him run off before they could get within ten feet of him. So, it was completely understandable that she, he, was pissed and didn't want him around her, his, child now that he wanted to be there for Naruto. He'd missed his chance, and - knowing Kushina - he would have to work very hard to get another one.

Kushina, in her guise as Izuna was an incredible actor, and honestly, if it hadn't been for that verbal tic, he wouldn't have realized it was her since she had never once dropped character since returning to Konoha three years after her supposed death. It had been a rather brilliant set-up really, and he could see why the Hokage was going along with it. This way, Kushina could look after Naruto without anyone realizing who she was and putting the boy in danger since far too many people knew that Kushina was Minato's sweetheart, and if people started associating Naruto with Kushina, they would soon start associating him with Minato which would not be good. Only those who'd been truly in the know about Kushina being Naruto's mother, not his cousin as the rest of the village had been told, knew exactly who Naruto's parents were, and none of them were talking.

When he'd first realized that "Izuna" was Kushina, he'd been upset that she hadn't found a way to keep Minato-sensei from dying, but understood why that might not have been possible. The seal that had kept her in this world had more than likely required a blood relative of some sort in order to work, and - according to the tests he'd had a medic who owed him run - the body that Kushina was inhabiting was a blood relative on her mother's line. Aside from Naruto, Minato-sensei's relatives were so thin on the ground as to be non-existent and he couldn't see Minato-sensei taking over his son's body in order to survive.

That of course begged the question of exactly how Kushina had found Orochimaru's underground lair and snuck into it in order to plant the seal on the infant who was either a clone of one of her ancestors or a close relative of one of her ancestors on his mother's side, and why she didn't report what was going on after she did so. And, of course, the question of when and why she had done so because - as far as he knew - nobody had known of the danger Konoha had been in back then until the Kyuubi had appeared out of nowhere and attacked.

Deciding to shelve that problem for later since he most likely wasn't going to get an answer to his questions any time soon, he settled back against the railing of the bridge where his team was supposed to meet in order to wait for his students who had not yet arrived.

* * *

Izuna scowled as he watched the "team"'s new sensei appear at the assigned meeting place. As far as he was concerned, Hatake Kakashi was an annoyance that he wanted to be rid of and as quickly as possible. The fact that the man was perpetually tardy was bad enough, but on top of that, the man was completely convinced that he was Naruto's mother for some strange reason which just went to show that as well as having problems telling time, the man was completely fucked in the head. Add in the fact that the man who had previously ignored and avoided Naruto for several years was now obsessed with the boy, and the resulting relationship between the both of them was strained to say the least.

The Hatake had most definitely lost several points for showing up two hours late for their team meeting. He also lost an extra number of points for not noticing that they were on a nearby rooftop watching and waiting for him to arrive since Naruto had needed to learn how to conduct a proper stake-out after all.

Nudging Naruto who looked like he was falling asleep as he watched the red bridge with their only pair of field-glasses with his elbow, he indicated that it was finally time to depart from their rooftop perch and make their way to their rendezvous point. Yawning and stretching, the Uzumaki child got up and then leapt from the roof before sticking himself to the side of the building they were on and running down it. Moments later, the both of them, who were painfully aware of who was missing as they stood in front of a relative stranger rather than Shisui, were at their team meeting site.

"Sorry we're late." he said when they were standing before their new "sensei". "But, we were too busy watching an elite ninja make a complete ass of himself-ttebane."

"Yeah, whatever Izuna-chan. Make sure it doesn't happen again." the Jounin who couldn't be less welcome if he hadn't bathed in a year casually replied.

He grit his teeth, but refrained from comment because he was sure that anything that he would actually say if he gave the lazy one-eyed Jounin a piece of his mind like he dearly wanted to would have him up on charges before he could say "Insubordination". The Hatake knew full well that he didn't like him intimating that he was Naruto's mother, and continued to do it anyways. Sure, he took care of Naruto and was more of a parent to the boy than a brother these days, but he was most definitely not Naruto's mother in any way shape or form, and he didn't need any of the villagers picking up on Kakashi's little hints and referring to him as such.

"Okay!" the Hatake said mock-cheerfully, startling him out of his anger. "Our first order of business today will be to see what the two of you can do."

Oh, he'd show the man what he could do alright, then he'd rip the man's mask off, and the stupid smile that was undoubtedly beneath the mask.

Kakashi was so going down.

* * *

Naruto did his best to hide his nervousness about being around the Kakashi person he'd been told would be his new sensei. The man who had followed his team around during missions and training had scared him from day one. The way the man had looked at Shisui-sensei like he had wanted to kill him had been upsetting well before Shisui-sensei had died. When Shisui-sensei had died, he just knew that the Kakashi person had had something to do with it. The Kakashi person had wanted him for some reason, and had wanted to steal him from Shisui-sensei. Shisui-sensei and Izuna-nii hadn't let him though, and that had made the Kakashi person angry.

He was scared of Kakashi, and afraid that Kakashi would try to hurt Izuna-nii as well, but he would do his best to be brave for Izuna-nii. Izuna-nii had protected him since he was tiny, and would protect him now if the Kakashi person tried to do something to him.

He was afraid that Izuna-nii would get hurt or killed protecting him from the Kakashi person though. Kakashi had killed Shisui-sensei, and Shisui-sensei had been very strong and knew practically everything about everything when it came to being a ninja.

* * *

**Omake:**

Kushina's Trip to the Afterlife

It had honestly taken Kushina a couple of minutes to realize she was actually dead. When she had done so, her only thought had been _Shit. _When she subsequently realized that her husband Minato was dead and that their newborn son had been left an orphan, her only thought had been _Double Shit. _All too soon, she had seen a bright light. Having read a number of stories about the supernatural, she immediately knew what to do.

As she traveled into the light, a man who had looked as if he'd been dragged through a hedge backwards blew past her heading in the opposite direction, screaming obscenities at his "Aniki" as he went. Deciding that it didn't concern her, even though the man had the exact same verbal tic she'd spent most of her life trying to get rid of, she chose to ignore this.

One of the first people she met when she reached the afterlife had been Hatake Sakumo, whom she promptly gave a piece of her mind with her fists. Shortly after she'd moved on, leaving a battered and bruised Sakumo to tend to his fire, she ended up running into her clan. The reunion had naturally been bittersweet, and there had been quite the party which she had eventually torn herself away from. As she wandered in slightly quieter climes, she met friends and acquaintances who had passed on before her, and met their other friends and acquaintances as well.

It had been after she'd wandered the afterlife for quite a while that something struck her as she was on her way to visit her cousin Mito.

_Wait a minute. _she thought_. Where the hell is Obito?_

**Edited 1-22-13**


	20. Into the Woods

Izuna hissed as he poked at the rather sizable bruise on his thigh. He couldn't wait until he got his adult body back, and with it, the longer reach and larger Chakra capacity which had made him someone to be feared on the battlefield back in the days when his name had been mentioned in conjunction with Madara's much as Tobirama's had been with Hashirama's. As it was, the only way he'd even have a chance of taking the Hatake who had started the mess he and Naruto were in out would be with the element of surprise, which was nearly impossible to gain now that the man was on his guard against him due to that little incident that had taken place when they'd first met.

Considering the fact that it would have saved him and Naruto who was currently watching him in concern a great deal of trouble down the line, he should have ignored Shisui and dealt with him then and there that day.

Things had gone to hell because the Hatake had decided to rile him up even further today, and had said something during their spar that had turned it serious, which had led to the untenable situation he and Naruto were currently in. The man was fucked in the head, but that wasn't an excuse since it was - rather unfortunately - a common affliction amongst ninja, and even his own brother...

Yeah, he was going to do his best to forget that one. He already regretted remembering it.

Even though he was rather annoyed with the fact that the Hatake persisted in believing that he was Naruto's mother, he could almost follow the thought processes that had brought the man to that conclusion. Ninja were trained to search for the "Underneath the Underneath" in every situation and, the longer one was a ninja, the more one automatically started looking for it lest one not notice a detail that was amiss and end up dying from one's own stupidity. When things were exactly what they appeared to be on the surface however, it had a tendency to drive more experienced ninja nuts as they kept looking for something that wasn't there, because there had to be something there. Cue the crazy theories that started making the ninja in question look even more insane than they already were, like with what happened during that incident with Madara-nii and a hooker that had turned out to be, well, a hooker.

He knew that the Hatake's little slips of the tongue were the man's way of saying "I know you're Kushina, and you know I know you're Kushina, so, let's cut the bullshit.". Unfortunately, there was no bullshit to cut, and each slip just served to insult him even further, especially since he'd told the man to cut it out several times only to get an indifferent response in return.

He probably wouldn't have minded the Hatake's constant hinting that he was Kushina nearly as much if he actually had been Kushina. But, he wasn't, and he was afraid that the crackpot theory would catch on with those who spied on his team's training and team meetings for whatever reason, and the last thing he needed would be to have his name and image tacked onto a new entry for the "Red Hot-Blooded Habanero" in the latest Bingo Book. He'd never hear the end of it, especially when he ended up back in the afterlife where Madara-nii and the damnable Senju brothers would undoubtedly be waiting for him.

He'd also noticed an element of gender confusion to a couple of the Hatake's slips, as if the man was uncertain as to what gender to assign to him. Though he'd be confused too if he ran into a man that he believed to be a reincarnation of someone he'd known all his life as a woman, it just served to further add fuel to the fire when it came to him and the Hatake.

One of these days, he was going to kill that man, but today apparently wasn't the day. Aside from the fact that he didn't have the necessary reach and Chakra capacity to deal with an opponent like the Hatake who was just below "Kage" when it came to his skill level, he had other things to deal with at the moment, such as possibly keeping Naruto alive.

Thanks to his smaller size, shorter reach, and lower Chakra capacity, he'd had to get much closer to the Hatake in order to properly fight him. Which - while allowing him to duck under the man's guard a few times - had also placed him in greater danger, as it gave his opponent who had a much longer reach than he did the advantage. An advantage that his opponent hadn't hesitated to press when he'd realized that he'd been serious during their spar. Fortunately, his status as a teammate/student had prevented the Hatake from taking things too far during that fight, and he'd escaped with minor injuries despite the fact that he'd tried to stab the man to death with a kunai. Though he'd tried his hardest, he'd lacked the arm strength necessary to stab through the man's vest which had apparently had some aftermarket alterations made to it.

At the end of their fight, he may have had several bruises, a couple of scrapes, and some bruised ribs from where he'd been thrown into a tree after he'd exposed the thin layer of armor plating that lined the Hatake's vest, but he'd left the Hatake with a bloody nose and a split lip to remember him by. Considering the situation he and Naruto were in thanks to that man though, it wasn't nearly enough. Being on the ground in a bloody and broken heap that would take several healers an hour to realize that what they were looking at had once been human wouldn't be nearly enough.

"Are you alright?" Naruto, who had followed him into the woods without question and continued following him away from the village until he'd found a good place to stop and rest a moment, asked nervously, drawing him out of his somewhat dark musings.

The poor boy had panicked when he'd blacked out after he'd hit the tree, and had thought that the Hatake had killed him, and what had happened during Naruto's little freak-out over his supposed death had been interesting to say the least. There had been a great deal of yelling, and screaming, and the boy had been surrounded by a strange orange-red Chakra that had felt exceedingly ominous, as the markings on his face changed and his eyes turned red with split pupils. The boy had then attacked the Hatake who had barely been able to hold the child off before he had managed to get up off the ground, and tried to get Naruto to bring himself back under control.

He hadn't done it a moment too soon if the Hatake's spooked reaction was anything to judge by. The instant Naruto was back under some semblance of control, the Hatake had sent them running into the woods and ordered them not to stop for anybody save himself and the Hokage, and told them that they'd better triple check their identities before they did so. And so, the two of them were stuck in the woods outside Konoha where he had nothing to tend to his injuries with aside from a healing jutsu he'd copied from someone who had been mediocre at it at best running from anyone or anything that might possibly be a threat, and he didn't have much of an idea as to why.

Sure, he knew that it had something to do with the Kyuubi. He could figure out that much at least. But, aside from that, he had little idea what was going on aside from the fact that he and Naruto were in danger, and they had to run.

The question was, would the threat come from some ninja who had believed Naruto to have slipped from whatever control the Yondaime had supposedly had him under for the last seven - nearly eight - years, or would it come from the civilian villagers who had irrationally wanted to dispose of Naruto from day one despite the fact that he hadn't really been anything approaching a threat until today, and wasn't really much of one even now? Could he even trust the Hatake or the Hokage? Could he trust Naruto's remaining friend amongst the village shinobi, or would Mizuki betray them?

They could run rings around whatever mobs of civilians might come after them once word of what had happened during today's training had spread, but when it came to shinobi, that depended. Anything below Jounin, he'd be able to handle on his own. Anything that level and above, and the best he could hope for would be to sacrifice himself and hope Naruto managed to make it to safety. Should it be Mizuki, it would probably kill Naruto. He didn't think that Naruto would be able to handle a betrayal by a trusted friend or supposed ally at the moment, and another serious emotional shock could tip the boy over the edge in the state he was currently in.

When it came to the Hatake who had gotten them into this mess, and may be the one to get them out of it again, part of him said not to trust the man who had proven himself to be exceedingly unstable and unreliable in the past. But, another part of him had seen the look in the Hatake's visible eye when he had told them to run. There had been fear. Not fear of Naruto, but fear for Naruto. Whatever the man's obsession with the boy was, he had seemed clearly and genuinely concerned for his safety in that moment, even despite the fact that the boy had flipped out and tried to kill him.

Despite the fact that he wanted to kill the man for getting him and Naruto into this situation, he knew that he could trust the man to tell them when it was safe to return at the very least, if he couldn't get them out of it altogether. Until he saw hide or hair of the Hatake however, he would have to lead Naruto through the woods to an old Uchiha holdout that was hopefully more than a mouldering wreck at the moment. At least there, they should be able to hide with something resembling shelter until this either blew over, or he learned exactly how much danger they were in and chose a different direction in which to run. A direction in which they might be able to hide for a few years if they were careful.

The fact that Naruto contained the Kyuubi of course complicated matters because, if they tried to run to another ninja village where they might otherwise be welcome, Konoha may try anything to get the boy back, even start a war. Nobody let go of something as powerful as a Biju willingly or easily when they had it in their grasp after all.

**Edited 1-22-13**


	21. A Note From the Hokage

The first of the villagers had started arriving at the Hokage's office as an out of breath Hatake Kakashi was rapidly explaining what had just caused Naruto to release some of the Kyuubi's Chakra. He could almost forgive some of the comments they made in their panic over the fact that Kyuubi Chakra had been felt in the village for the first time in nearly eight years, but he wouldn't be forgetting them should anything untoward happen to Naruto, and he wouldn't be taking any of their suggestions either.

He had a bit more of an idea as to what had happened, as Kushina had released a similar amount of the Kuubi's Chakra during the days following Uzushiogakure's fall back before she'd somehow gotten the creature under control. Back then, the villagers had sensed it, and not known what it was because the battle at the Valley of the End had been long before their time, and the Kyuubi had yet to make its appearance within the village walls, and it had been just another thing that had added to the general unease during the dark days of the Second War. Considering the amount of stress Naruto had been under since the death of his previous sensei, one of his teammates, and the man who'd been like an uncle to him, he'd been half expecting for this to happen for a while, and had been debating over what he would do when it finally happened. He'd hoped that the boy would have been outside the village when he finally released the Kyuubi's Chakra, but that clearly had not been the case.

Deciding to nip any potential mischief on the parts of the villagers in regards to Naruto in the bud, he drafted a letter that would be sent out to every business and residence in Konoha since calling a village-wide meeting would be impractical, and frankly impossible. After doing so, he sent the letter off to the printers, handed Kakashi a long C-Ranked mission for his team to complete, and sent him out to find his students.

What he'd really wanted to do to Kakashi was strangle him for starting this mess, but he needed someone he could trust to have Naruto's safety and best interests in mind to keep Naruto out of harm's way until cooler heads prevailed and everything blew over. Unfortunately, the only person who came close to fitting that description that he had on hand was Kakashi, since Jiraiya was keeping tabs on a minor skirmish between Suna and Iwa that was taking place in the small country that rested between the borders of Earth and Wind. He would almost be willing to say that he could trust Mizuki, but there were some unanswered questions regarding the death of one of that man's teammates. That meant that he would have to save any possible strangling of the Copy-nin for later.

Lighting his pipe as Kakashi departed, he leaned back and waited for Danzo and the other two to arrive and start making even more inane suggestions in regards to the care, feeding, and training of Minato's son.

* * *

Iruka watched as Mizuki turned into more and more of a nervous wreck with each minute that passed since the Kyuubi's Chakra had been felt within the village for the first time in nearly eight years. Mizuki had cared for Naruto who'd seemed like an ordinary boy until now, and whatever had happened to the boy had disturbed him greatly. The not knowing what had happened was probably the worst part of it.

After preparing a cup of his friend's favorite tea, he went over to his couch where Mizuki was seated and muttering to himself in order to comfort the older man who had been there for him in the years since his parents had been killed in the Kyuubi attack.

"He's got to be dead." Mizuki was saying. "He has to be. If the Yondaime's seal had broken, there'd be a giant nine-tailed fox loose in the middle of the village."

As Mizuki absent-mindedly took the tea from him, not really paying attention to what it was, there was a knock at the door. After leaving Mizuki's side to answer it, he opened the door to find a courier on his doorstep despite the fact that he wasn't expecting any mail since all his bills were paid, and anyone who would be willing to write to him could just as easily walk over to his apartment and talk to him.

"Letter from the Hokage." the man said as he pulled an envelope from his overfull bag and shoved it into his hands.

After closing the door behind the departing courrier, he opened the envelope curious as to what was inside, as the Hokage had never written him before. The "Letter from the Hokage" was obviously a mass produced copy, but clearly wasn't junk mail as it bore a mimeographed copy of the Sandaime's signature, which was something that only the Hokage's office could use. As he read the letter, he grew angrier and angrier.

"What's wrong?" Mizuki asked, probably having noticed his mood thanks to the amount of Killing Intent he'd started putting out.

"Some bastard who found out that Jinchuriki release Biju Chakra when severely stressed thought it would be funny to try to provoke Naruto into going on a rampage by attacking that...Izuna." he snarled as he crumpled the note in his fist, wishing it was the throat of the man who had frightened the entire village and put a child at risk of being killed by the frightened villagers.

"What?!" Mizuki said as he leapt off the couch and snatched the crumpled missive from him and started reading it.

"So, Naruto's..." Mizuki started, looking both relieved and concerned at the same time.

"Alive, yes." he said. "The same won't be said about the next bastard who tries to pull something like that in the future though."

* * *

Across town, a woman was feeling sorry for Naruto for the first time...

"That poor boy." she said as she re-read the letter that had been sent to her family by the Hokage's office.

The letter which had explained what had happened earlier that day had detailed how Naruto's sensei, one of his teammates, and a man who'd practically adopted the boy as his own had recently been slaughtered by Itachi, and went on to further state that the...person who had practically raised Naruto since he was three since there was no-one else because Naruto's parents had been killed in the Kyuubi attack had been attacked right in front of him by an unknown assailant, causing the boy to release a very small amount of the Kyuubi's Chakra in his distress as he tried to defend one of the very few people in the village who cared about him from a much stronger opponent.

"That poor boy." she said again.

All this time she'd been turning a cold shoulder to the Uzumaki boy in the marketplace, the child had nobody but a bunch of Uchiha who'd probably been planning to use him to their own ends and that...that man who wore a child's skin. Because Fugaku's eldest son had gone on a killing spree, the child had almost nobody now except that unholy being that had latched onto him, and someone had just tried to take him away from the boy who'd never known a mother's kindness because the monster that had been sealed within him had stolen his mother from him beforehand as well.

"What is it mama?" the woman's daughter asked, wondering what had made her mother so sad.

"Sakura," the woman said, "You know how I told you never to play with that Naruto boy?"

"Yes?" her daughter replied.

"I've changed my mind."

* * *

Deep in the woods that surrounded Konoha, a pair of boys ran. Their running wasn't aimless, as one of them who periodically checked the sun and climbed above the canopy on occasion had a destination in mind. Though he didn't know where they were going, Naruto followed Izuna's lead. In all the time he'd known him, Izuna-nii had never steered him wrong, and he was certain that he wouldn't do so now.

He wasn't entirely certain what he'd done wrong. But whatever it was, it had to be bad, considering how scared Izuna-nii looked. This worried him as well as the hisses of pain that Izuna-nii occasionally let out. He wasn't sure how much longer Izuna-nii could run, and based on what he'd said about where they were going, it was a long ways away...

While they paused so that they could look for some water because he was thirsty, Hatake Kakashi found them.

"Who are you?" Izuna-nii said as he pulled out a kunai two seconds after Kakashi appeared in the clearing they'd paused in.

"Who do you think I am Kushina-san, the Tsuchikage?" the masked man replied.

"Prove it." Izuna-nii replied coldly.

Kakashi lifted up his hitai-ate. Instead of a sunken place where an empty socket would be like on that one old man he'd met, there was a normal eyelid that had a scar running up and down it. When the eye opened, it was one of those Sharingan things that the Uchiha had.

Giving Kakashi a look of utmost loathing, Izuna-nii put his kunai away.

"I should kill you for that, if nothing else." Izuna-nii said coldly, gesturing to the eye that Kakashi was hiding behind his hitai-ate.

"I wish you wouldn't, it'd make it impossible for us to complete our mission." Kakashi said.

"Our mission?" Izuna-nii asked.

"Hokage-sama gave us a mission to take until the village calms down a bit." Kakashi replied.

"So, what's the mission?" Izuna-nii asked.

"I don't know, I haven't read the scroll yet."


	22. C-Rank Runaround

"Say another word, and I'll strangle you -ttebane!" Izuna said as the group mercifully made its way under the cover of the trees of Fire Country.

There was a reason that Uchiha never took missions in Wind Country if they could help it, and that reason was the fact that the complexions of the vast majority of the clan ranged from pale to ghost white. Thanks to that little bit of courier work during which they'd found themselves bringing an antique vase to Suna, and the fact that he and Naruto had left the village without bringing sunblock of any kind including the old Uchiha recipe that took a good long while to make and was usually made in extremely large batches because of this, he was currently lobster red.

Naruto who was one of those lucky bastards who tanned rather than burned, started snickering, as did Kakashi who'd had so much of his skin covered that he didn't need any sunscreen, causing his mood to plummet even further. In the mood that he was currently in because every movement was agony, odds were that Naruto would probably lose a limb or two if he tried poking him again. Not even Madara-nii had been stupid enough to try something like that, even though his older brother had picked on him at every opportunity before he'd died.

The delivery of the antique vase to Suna had completed the last leg of a barter chain that had sent them racing back and forth across the continent. Apparently, some wealthy citizen in Suna had wanted the vase, but had not had what the owner of the vase who had been living in the Fire Country capitol had wanted in return. Someone who lived in Tea Country on the other hand had had what the person in the Capitol had wanted, but they'd wanted something that someone in the small nation of Wave possessed, and the person in Wave had wanted something from someone in Lightning country who in turn had wanted something from an artist who lived in the Country of Iron who'd in turn had wanted something from someone in Ame, and the man from Ame had in turn wanted something from someone in River Country who'd in turn wanted something from someone in the middle of nowhere in Fire Country who'd wanted what the rich guy in Suna had to offer.

Rather than hiring ninja teams from at least three to five different countries to deal with this issue and possibly cause the chain to break down somewhere along the line despite the fact that several legs of the journey passed through countries that had their own ninja villages, the man from Suna had hired a Suna team to bring the first item to the guy in the middle of nowhere and get the ball rolling, and hired them to deal with the rest of the rigamarole.

After spending two days on the road, going slow in deference to his injuries and the fact that Naruto wasn't really all that accustomed to ninja travel, though Shisui had taught him the tree hopping technique after he'd mastered tree-climbing, they'd arrived at the home of the country bumpkin who'd apparently possessed a sculpture that the man who'd been living just outside of Tanigakure had wanted. The sculpture which was a rather nice glass piece that looked like it could've been one of his uncle's works was gently placed in a storage scroll and carried to their next stop.

The trip to River Country took four days because the team wasn't in any particular hurry, and Kakashi had even shelled out for a night at a roadside inn when it had started raining heavily. In River Country, they exchanged the glass sculpture for a rather nice jade lion which was checked out by Kakashi and compared to the description in their mission assignment scroll. Once both pieces were verified, the glass piece by a Tanigakure ninja and an antiques expert who kept giving Kakashi suspicious glances, and the jade lion by Kakashi's Sharingan which Izuna longed to rip out of the man's head every time he saw it since it didn't belong to him, they left for the outskirts of Amegakure.

Shortly after they'd arrived in Rain Country, Kakashi had left them at an isolated roadside inn and told them to stay there until he returned for them. Apparently, Ame was an unstable region, and this was the part of the glorified mail-carrier mission where Kakashi earned his pay. While they had been waiting for the Hatake to return, a man in a high-collared black cloak with red clouds and a hat that almost completely obscured his face dropped by the inn. Naruto - who was coming out of his shell due to a number of relatively friendly encounters on the road - had promptly started talking the man's ear off the instant he'd perceived a relative lack of hostility. The man's girlfriend whom he'd obviously been waiting for considering he left with her soon afterward had declared Naruto to be cute and gave him an origami bird which Naruto promptly gave her a hug and an enthusiastic thanks for in return.

After departing Rain Country with whatever object that the Hatake had picked up, which was quite likely illegal considering the distaste with which the man carried it to its destination in Iron Country, they made their way to what was nearly the half-point of their journey. Other than Naruto's asking a rather bemused and somewhat amused samurai for his autograph, loudly and enthusiastically mentioning an action movie that Shisui had taken the team to see, the trip to Iron Country was rather uneventful. Naruto had gotten his autograph, and they'd picked up the massive cast-iron lawn ornament that was in the shape of one of those long-necked pink birds that had knees that bent backward that the man in Lightning country had wanted.

When they'd gotten to Lightning country, the man to whom they were making their delivery had ordered them to set the massive, brightly painted, cast-iron "flamingo" in his yard "Just-so". After several hours of back breaking work, they'd finally gotten the thing positioned to the Lightning country bastard's satisfaction. After being given some refreshments which had ended up saving the new flamingo owner's life though he didn't know it, they were given a complete set of an out of print Manga that he'd remembered enjoying reading in his youth. He hadn't been allowed to read any of it however, since the volumes were "Mint" and had to stay that way.

On the boat ride to Wave country, which was a small and relatively poor nation, they couldn't help but wonder at the odd behavior of a pair of men in a nearby boat that was anchored in the channel between Wave and Fire. As a man who seemed to have a bit of a drinking problem looked on, a rather nerdy man with glasses ran a long metal tube into the water, apparently seeking the bottom.

"Another sample here, and we can call it for the day" the nerdy looking man said.

That was however about the only interesting thing in Wave, as the manga about a planet-destroying alien who was guided to the path of non-violence by a member of his species who'd settled on a planet much like their own after he'd been sent to destroy it as an infant was delivered without a hitch. After getting some sort of puzzle box that had obviously been made by the Uzumaki which the Hatake kept giving significant glances, they finally headed to the land of Tea.

In the land of Tea, they traded their Uzumaki puzzle box which he hadn't been in the least bit inclined to "claim" no matter how many times the Hatake had intimated he should have for an ancient tea set which was very delicately packed away and carried to the home of a minor noble. After having the set examined by an antiquarian who specialized in such things, the noble who held a low ranking in the Fire Daimyo's court finally handed over the vase.

It was at that point that the hell began. Even though they'd made their way over the desert as quickly as they possibly could since Kakashi was practically roasting in his darkish clothing, it wasn't fast enough. The sun had beat mercilessly down on Izuna's skin which had started to burn in the second hour. Naruto, who complained about the sand that was getting into his sandals and other places didn't seem to notice the sun or the heat all that much however.

While Kakashi delivered the vase to the client who hadn't wanted any "kids" in the house "where they might break things", Izuna and Naruto had been dismissed to go "play". While Izuna had been resting in what little shade he could find, ignoring the amused glances of the local shinobi and hissing in pain as he applied an ointment he'd purchased at a local apothecary to every inch of his burnt skin, Naruto went off to see if he could make any "friends" like he had in Rain Country.

"He didn't mean to break my arm, honest!" Naruto said two hours later as he was being carried away from the red-haired devil child he'd "befriended" while the Kazekage himself stood there with his face in his hands groaning.

Fortunately for the devil child's continued survival, Naruto's arm had pretty much mended itself by the time the team was an hour out from Suna, and Izuna had ended up being stuck with Naruto poking his lobster red skin which had burned even more on the way out because he'd only had enough money for either sunscreen or a healing salve, and he'd rather foolishly thought the healing salve to be the more important at the time.

By the time that Izuna had reached the nice cool shade of Fire Country, he just wanted the stupid adventure to be over. Considering the mood he was in, he'd almost be happy to see Konoha again.


End file.
